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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Woman who is blind in the Quiet Coach - was I unreasonable? [Title edited by MN at request of OP]

104 replies

TheOpaqueAndJelliedTruth · 17/09/2014 15:05

I was going to post this on the thread about small, unreasonable irritations, but I don't actually know if I was being unreasonable. I was in the quiet coach on a long-distance train, trying to sleep. They'd just done the 'and coach B is the quiet coach, please do not use mobile phones etc.' bit. I know sometimes they book you into a quiet coach automatically, but I'm pretty certain they don't on this train. FWIW.

A woman was using a phone that played messages to her, quite loudly. After a few minutes when it was clear she wasn't planning to stop anytime soon, I got up and said excuse me, this is the quiet coach, would you mind not using your phone? She totally ignored me, so I repeated myself, and I realized at this point that she was blind (hence, obviously, needing her phone to play her messages, which I hadn't cottoned on to).

The bloke sitting next to me said, as I sat down, that she was probably using her phone because she was blind - I got the impression he meant I'd been unfair to ask her to stop.

What do you reckon? On the one hand, obviously she has a disability. On the other hand, it's still rude to be disturbing a whole coach of people, many of whom were clearly trying to sleep. And I've no clue why she completely ignored me, as obviously she could hear.

OP posts:
Lambsie · 17/09/2014 15:33

Wearing headphones would have meant she couldn't hear what was going on around her which may have made her feel uncomfortable.

HelenaQC · 17/09/2014 15:33

The OP did say she didn't know she was blind, Jinglebells Hmm

Original poster
TheOpaqueAndJelliedTruth · 17/09/2014 15:33

Oh, sorry, my last was to jingle.

ohno - I didn't feel as if you were! Smile I do think she could hear me, though. Couldn't swear to it, but it came across as ignoring, not not hearing, if you know what I mean?

OP posts:
Marmiteandjamislush · 17/09/2014 15:36

YABU to refer to her as a blind woman, I think. Unless you are disabled your self and use social model terminology as preference of course. Otherwise you should retitle your post as phone use in QC and refer to a woman who is blind

Original poster
TheOpaqueAndJelliedTruth · 17/09/2014 15:37

Oh, I'm very sorry. I'll ask HQ to change it, thank you.

OP posts:
Thumbwitch · 17/09/2014 15:38

She may not have known you were speaking to her directly, although I actually think she must have done as she was the only one playing loud messages in the quiet carriage! So chances are she was ignoring you, but possibly not out of rudeness as much as self-preservation. She may have encountered people before who picked on her because of her disability, unlike you, who didn't realise she had one to start with. In which case, staying quiet could have been a better option for her.
Or she was just rude.

Marmiteandjamislush · 17/09/2014 15:38

Other than that YWNBU

londonrach · 17/09/2014 15:38

Yanbu. However if blind she might not have realised but once informed of it by you she should have turned the phone off or moved. Very rude not too. The other guy was wrong.

Marmiteandjamislush · 17/09/2014 15:40

No need to apologise, I just like to make people aware of the politics of labeling where I can. 'Tis part of my main job see.

Original poster
TheOpaqueAndJelliedTruth · 17/09/2014 15:41

Oh, that's a point, thumb. Sad I can see it must be really scary to be in a public space and unable to see what people might do.

Thanks marmite. Have asked for it to be changed now.

OP posts:
Original poster
TheOpaqueAndJelliedTruth · 17/09/2014 15:42

Ahh, I see - I was aware, actually, which makes it worse. I would tend to use the same phasing for my own extremely mild disability, but TBH I wouldn't want to use it for others because I have heard people explain it can come across as rude. So really, I should have known better!

OP posts:
ChasedByBees · 17/09/2014 15:59

I think YWNBU, but often when a train ticket is booked, it randomly allocates your seat, you don't get a choice about quiet carriage or not which is irritating.

In her position, it may have auto allocated and it would be difficult for her to move so I can see why she didn't want to engage (even though it was rude) but I think she should have stopped listening to them.

WannaBe · 17/09/2014 16:04

I am blind. :-)

Wrt the woman knowing she was in the quiet coach, she may not have known - even if she'd had a pre-booked ticket. If she's not a regular on that particular rail network then she wouldn't necessarily know which were the quiet coaches. If her seat was booked due to it having been booked by disability assistance, they will often book a seat anywhere on the train and don't always tell you it's the quiet coach, so again, she may not have known, and if she was given assistance by the assistance office at whatever station she was travelling from, she may not even have known which coach she was in hence not knowing. Alternatively, if she was travelling independently she may just have got into a coach with no idea. I've done this in the past and ended up in first class. Blush Grin

Now wrt her using her phone in the quiet coach, tbh this is a bit of a grey area IMO. personally I find voiceover on my iPhone incredibly irritating and intrusive when played through a speeker, and as such I always use headphones even in the privacy of my own home. And I find it irritating when heard on someone else's phone too. But fact is that many people with VI do (for some inexplicable reason) use their phones loudly on trains, buses, etc etc. Now here's where the grey area lies for me:

Anyone else travelling in that coach would still have been able to use their phone and it wouldn't have been an issue. In an ideal world, the woman would have headphones (if you wear the in-ear ones you can wear just one and still hear the noise around you) but she may not have had any, in which case she has no choice but to use her phone with speech turned on. And there is no way of knowing whether she actually knew it was the quiet coach, and if she was put there by someone she is not actually responsible for being there iyswim and therefore not responsible for the fact she was using her phone in the quiet coach - if that makes sense.

Wrt her ignoring you, without knowing how you addressed her, it's impossible to know whether or not she was aware you were actually talking to her. I've inadvertently ignored people when they've talked to me because they haven't been close enough for me to realise they were actually talking to me, similarly I've responded to people who weren't talking to me... Blush

Equally she may have been embarrassed at being told off by a member of the public for something which was not her fault, but rather than wanting a confrontation, chosen to stay silent. It can feel incredibly humiliating to essentially be told off by someone else...

firesidechat · 17/09/2014 16:19

Both of my parents are blind.

I think she was being unreasonable.

Viviennemary · 17/09/2014 16:22

This is quite a difficult one. If she was listening to messages for the whole journey then she shouldn't really have been in the quiet coach. But if it was only a couple of times then fair enough.

MortaIWombat · 17/09/2014 16:25

marmite Why (not stirring, just interested) is 'blind woman' not ok, and 'woman who is blind' is ok? And is it the same for black woman/woman who is black, or middle-aged woman/woman who is middle-aged, or teenage girl/girl who is teenaged?

I'm a big fan of avoiding circumlocutory speech if possible, but I don't want to be offensive either.

Off to do dc collection, so won't be back for 40 mins or so, but will check back in later hoping for help!

poolomoomon · 17/09/2014 16:26

She could and should have used earphones. Yanbu. Also I'm assuming if she could hear the voice on the phone she could hear you so she was purposely ignoring you, being blind doesn't also make you deaf.

ouryve · 17/09/2014 16:28

ohnoyou Wed 17-Sep-14 15:21:40

She may not have been ignoring you.
I work with someone who is both deaf and blind, I have to touch her to get her attention.

___

Surely, the person you know would never be playing messages on their phone, though. Text to speech is a very useful tool if your eyesight is far too poor to read, but rather pointless if you can't hear it, either.

Beastofburden · 17/09/2014 16:32

I agree with wannaBe I have a friend who is blind and he says it is very hard to know who is talking to you. And if you are concentrating on your phone messages you may well block out extraneous things. Did she show no sign at all of noticing what you said? Are you sure she deliberately ignored you rather than just didn't realise?

If by the time she realised, you had moved off, she wouldn't be able to find you again to say sorry- or to explain her position. She wouldn't recognise you again, for a start, unless she heard you.

And I agree she might not have wanted a confrontation. you're just a voice to her, she is alone on a train, she knows she is vulnerable. People do get beaten up.

I don't think you were BU but perhaps nor was she.

WannaBe · 17/09/2014 16:34

I don't find 'blind woman' offensive. but one of the reasons why some people consider it offensive is because it is seen to be using the label to define the person. However, IMO there is a difference between saying 'blind woman' to describe someone who is blind, because whichever way round you use the term she still is blind. It's different to say describing a child with Downs as 'a downs child' because they have downs rather than are downs, iyswim.

Tbh I think it's impossible to know whether the woman deliberately ignored the op. If she only spoke once she may genuinely not have realised she was talking to her, if the op had spoken more than once I would say she was being deliberately rude but if the op only said it once it's impossible to know.

EmilyGilmore · 17/09/2014 16:36

Oh my. I couldn't. I think you'd have to very hard-faced to tackle a blind person for that. She was hardly going to be doing it for the whole journey, couldn't you have shown some tolerance and understanding? Her life is a million times harder than yours on probably every level, couldn't you just give her a break and put your irritation to one side for a few minutes? 5 mins to check her messages? But you know your rights I suppose... That's depressing.

Thumbwitch · 17/09/2014 16:38

FFS, the OP didn't know she was blind!

Original poster
TheOpaqueAndJelliedTruth · 17/09/2014 16:39

wannabe - as I said in my OP, I repeated myself.

I do take your point that she may still have struggled to know who was talking to her. And yes, of course, it's not nice to be 'told off' in public. But when I started talking, I didn't realize she was blind, and I think I was reasonably polite. I definitely didn't go in with 'how dare you be on your phone?!' kind of aggression - I just figured that (like lots of people) she hadn't noticed she was in the quiet coach. I mean, I wasn't aiming to 'humiliate' her because of anything specific to her blindness, though I can see that she may have come across nasty attitudes before and got to feel it's better to ignore everyone. Which is rotten.

I travel a lot on trains and 99% of the time, if you say politely 'do you mind, you're in the quiet coach' the response is 'oops, I didn't realize!' So I hadn't particularly felt aggressive about it.

I did feel narked by the time we hit Darlington (London-Edinburgh train) and she was still doing it, however.

OP posts:
Hattifattiner · 17/09/2014 16:40

Headphones. Quite frankly in every coach, not just the quiet coach.
I agree she might not have known it was the quiet coach, and that she might not have realised you were speaking to her. But she still should have been using headphones.

Flywheel · 17/09/2014 16:40

Did she keep playing the messages after you spoke to her? She may have been embarrassed and just wanted to keep her head down. She also may not have known you were talking to her. Although your request was not unreasonable, I'd be inclined to cut her some slack. Moving seats would have been a massive pita for her.

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