to enjoy winding up people who think their bag needs a seat

[motheroftwoboys]

I usually wimp out of asking people to move so I can sit down but yesterday and today have, with a smile, asked to sit down. You would think I was asking the earth. Young woman yesterday, sitting on the aisle seat on a busy bus with very small handbag on seat. She sighed dramatically and made a big play of making me sit at the window instead of moving across herself. I got off before her and she actually tutted when I politedly said excuse me. I said thank you in over loud and friendly way and I was still chuckling when I got off the bus. This morning there was a bloke who thought his paper needed a seat when he was reading it. Same tactic. Same response. Wonder what my journey home will bring. [wing]

I was on the bus once trapped in the window seat by a woman who decided I made the perfect shelf for her shopping and tube of wrapping paper. A stop after she got on, loads of people got off and there were loads of free seats so I said excuse me and squeezed past her and went and sat somewhere else where I wouldn't have wrapping paper jabbed in my ribs. She watched me move and then screamed at me OH AM I NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO SIT NEXT TO? I just mumbled something about not wanting her shopping on top of me because she was quite scary.

Oh and there was this random older than me lady once who smacked me with a newspaper. I took my headphones out and she told me to turn my music down so she could read her paper in peace. Instead of smacking her with her own paper like I should have I said yes I would turn it down and pretended to fiddle with it and she seemed pleased enough and opened her paper. The best part? My iPod wasn't even on so there was no music to turn down. Power trip bus passengers annoy me.

Every time without exception when someone makes me sit in the window seat I get off before they do.

I once had the nerve to make someone pick up his McD's lunch from the seat so that I didn't have to sit on the seat in front, which was under a scorching sun on a hot Summer afternoon.
He was not pleased.
I couldn't care less.

When I was 8 months' pregnant and very big I had to catch a long distance train (3 hour trip). There was one spare seat. I literally had to run along the aisle to get to it as a young man was racing to get it from the other end of the carriage. He only gave up when I just nipped in in front of him.

On another train trip, when also very obviously pregnant, I had to stand up as no seats, while next to me parents with children happily sat on, with never a thought that a child might be asked to give up their seat for me. No-one offered.

Oh, and also took great pleasure in telling this guy on a long distance bus that he was in the wrong seat.
Curiously, his seat was between windows, whilst mine had a large window view, and the seat numbers were obvious in relation to the seats.
Mistake my .
These people just expect the rightful owners to tell them to keep the seat.

I always sit in an aisle seat on a train/bus, as if I sit by the window and someone sits next to me I feel really claustrophobic, and sometimes have had panic attacks. So I would be one of the annoying people who would move so that you can sit in the seat by the window and I would stay in the aisle seat. I do feel bad for being awkward, but I just find being boxed in too anxiety provoking. So sometimes it might be someone like me, who isn't deliberately being difficult, but does really want to sit in the aisle seat.

I yearn to ask men who're practically sitting in the box splits on public transport if they've seen a doctor yet as something is obviously terribly wrong.

However, I did once tell someone he had to move his bags on a packed tube. He was taking up the seats on either side of him with his stuff & the tube was rammed. There were people standing all along the carriage so I actually had to peer round someone to tell him he needed to Move. His. Stuff. And. Let. People. Sit. Down.

I was once on a VERY busy train in SW London coming up to Waterloo. I was on crutches but no-one would let me sit down. I was held up by the sheer press of people. Before I passed out and/or threw up (and I would have been aiming to splatter as many people as possible, yes) two women from the group who'd been deliberately ignoring my request for a seat & my general presence alighted. I moved to sit down and had to ask one of them to move the tiny handbag she'd just put on the vacated seat. She then claimed that she'd not noticed me standing. Ahahahahahahaha.

On Saturday I asked an aisle!sitter (we were at the startpoint of the route, incidentally) to let me sit down. She glared at me as though I'd asked her to sign all her worldly goods over to be & then swivelled round in her seat. I was carrying a biggish rucksack & a large cloth bag of food shopping, clearly visible to her. I tried to squeeze past & rearrange my possessions without clobbering her only for her to leap up & stalk away. The couple sitting across from me had been watching all this & proffered the opinion she was clearly bonkers & I was better off without her sitting next to me. (They were right as my bag turned out to be able to have a seat of its own the whole journey despite my hoiking it onto my lap at each stop ready to let someone who wanted to sit down.)

I have to ask people to let me sit down - including giving up their seats - because my disability means I cannot stand up on public transport. It is incredibly painful & because I cannot compensate for the movement of the train I will inevitably fall & [partially] dislocate multiple joints & risk snapping a brittle bone or two. Most days you can't tell this just from looking at me, but I loathe the times I have to literally beg for a seat, offering to show my DP Freedom Pass/Railcard or my Blue Badge & explain what will happen if I don't get a seat. I get people simply gawp at me, I get people wait it out in the hopes of Someone Else Getting Up, I get tutted & harrumphed at, I get whispered about: it really is grim. I have reached the point where I routinely take out the wee folder I keep documents in & pretend to hunt for something so I can show the staring!people my Blue Badge. Last summer I had a bad fall on the tube after no-one would let me sit down & I tried to make it along to the next set of seats to ask there. The woman who'd looked up at me as I asked at given me a filthy look came charging down the carriage to "help", which meant ignoring everything I was saying, trying to haul me up (I'd only just put my sodding shoulder BACK) & in-between trying to insist she should pull the emergency alarm told me I should have ASKED for a seat if THIS was going to happen. Erm...

People are really quite horribly behaved on public transport. I wish I could magically distribute appropriate punishments/rewards...

My best one was when a lady had a box next to her on the only remaining seat on a bus. I asked her to move it so my DD aged abour 6 could sit down.

She said 'It's a dinner service, it's precious'

I replied 'If you think that is more precious than my daughter, then you are very much mistaken, now either you move it, or I will'.

She moved it.

The ones that piss me off are the men who obviously have swollen genitalia as they have to sit with their legs akimbo

I used to amuse my self when I lived in London.

If a bloke sat next to me on the tube and did that legs akimbo thing I wouldn't move my legs.

So they sit down, spread legs, make contact with your leg, pull legs together and then put legs back and are shocked your leg is still there. It really messes with their brains.

That moment of contact is supposed to be for a woman to demurely put her ankles together and leave space for him.

If there are only seats next to people left, I always go for the one with the tiny handbag perched on it / person trying to take over both seats... Otherwise it feels like you're penalising the (vast majority) of nice considerate people by letting the spacehoggers get away with it.

I'm going to annoy all of you by confessing to be one of the people who puts something on the outside seat to stop people sitting next to me on buses.
And as such, YABU.

Bus seats are too close together. If anyone sits next to me, they are immediately in my personal space and it makes my skin crawl. So yes, if I can possibly avoid it by making you sit elsewhere, I WILL leave stuff on the seat. If it's the only seat left, I'll have to let you sit next to me, but I will turn on my death-glare to try and dissuade you, and I won't turn my music down either, no matter how many times you ask me. If you can hear my music, you are too close.

The girl the OP encountered this morning was OTT, though. Shifting to the window seat is far easier, and involves less unnecessary contact.

GalaxyDefender and others who out bags on seats... We all agree that bus seats are too close together - but given that we also all have to

[oops accidental post! ] share the bus/train as it currently is, it just feels so unfair that some people feel they deserve the special treatment of an extra seat. #blitzspiritorsomethinglikethat

As predicted there was an aisle sitter on the bus this morning with various bits of luggage neatly stacked on the seat by the window. She was in the first row of seats and therefore directly behind the actual luggage rack .
Of course mostly every bus/train passenger would like to be seated alone, it's the selfish laying claim to the extra space and be damned everyone else (seat hoggers are always engrossed in anything apart from embarking passengers in need of a seat. It's public transport people, and you might have to share with another member of the public.

I'm looking at an aisle hogger now. What shall I say?

GalaxyDefender Seat are too close together I agree, but that doesn't mean your need for personal space is any greater than mine. I too would like to have that seat next to me empty but like everyone else I accept that someone has the right to sit there.

If I had to sit next to you I am pretty thick skinned and all your tricks would be roundly ignored.

Also the seats are not "too close together". They are exactly as close together as they should be. That is - really close together! It's so that loads of people can squish on and be transported to their destination rather than standing in the rain at a bus stop watching lots of buses whizz past carrying two or three people in huge comfort

If you don't like sharing space then anything with the word public in it is not for you.

I don't mind aisle sitters btw. I like a window seat myself so always happy to squish by if there's a space.

"Bus seats are too close together. If anyone sits next to me, they are immediately in my personal space and it makes my skin crawl. ... I will turn on my death-glare to try and dissuade you, and I won't turn my music down either, no matter how many times you ask me. If you can hear my music, you are too close."

GalaxyDefender, a bus/train is public space -shared. When you step into it, you need to accept that your personal space has just shrunk to zero. And the death-glare and loud music - that's just you being rude.

Galaxy, if public transport makes your skin crawl so much, maybe try not to use it? Why on earth does your desire for more space rate higher than everyone else's? They've all paid the same to be on the bus/train, they all have a right to a seat.

MN is home to some odd comments on a regular basis but blimey, that's one of the most happily selfish comments I've read in a while

Yeah Galaxy, get a job, earn some money and buy a car and leave the buses to people who can play nicely

oh no. Galaxy behind the wheel with her sense of space entitlement...

Only teasing G

Does Galaxy think any of us like having our personal space invaded? You just sound very rude tbh.

I bet you sit in the seats allocated for the elderly and disabled as well.

That is another bugbear of mine. People who plonk themselves down in those seats (usually students and young men) who could easily have moved further down the bus and won't budge when an old person gets on.

Galaxy. May I suggest you take the car or perhaps walk? It must be bloody hard work being irrationally angry with everyone around you.

If you can hear my music, you are too close.

Actually, if I can hear your music, your hearing will soon be damaged.
Your loss.
Literally.