...to think this woman was being ridiculous

[MrsCosmopifairylight]

I was out shopping yesterday in a small local branch of a chain store. The store has a lift and a flight of stairs.

I was coming up the stairs with my 3 year old (who was a bit ahead of me), and there was a woman at the top of the staircase.

Woman at top of staircase was peering down, anxiously, holding onto the rail. I assumed she was nervous about falling, so asked DD to stop and move aside so the woman could come down the stairs.

Woman remained at the top of the stairs, and then a young boy passed me and DD, and started to go up. Woman appeared even more anxious.

I said we'd stop to let her pass, so she could come down.
Then she said to us, and to young boy (who was headed to where she was) "I'm very superstitious. Please can you go back downstairs so I don't have to pass you?"

I rolled my eyes and stomped past her, with DD. Woman shot me nasty glares.

There was a shop assistant upstairs, about to approach the woman, but as the stairs were now "safe" she'd headed off to leave the shop.

If she was that bothered why the fuck didn't she use the lift? Or why didn't she just wait for other people to come up the stairs?

I don't understand superstition and I find it incredibly frustrating when there is no rational explanation for this sort of behaviour.

Before I get totally flamed, I've a friend with a number of mental health issues including OCD. She advises me that she has issues with things, and I accept these. However, she would NOT ask other people to go out of their way to accommodate her needs. If she needed to not pass people on a staircase then she'd get in a lift.

Lovely to hear about the "considerate" mentally ill who don't expect others to accommodate their difference.

It is possible to be unreasonable, inconsiderate, and mentally ill. The terms are not mutually exclusive. Just because inconsiderate and rude behavior has a reason doesn't suddenly make it less rude or off putting. I have had a GAD, and yes if I snapped at people to get them to cater to my anxiety it would be rude. If it's rude without an anxiety disorder, then it's rude with one.

The woman could have asked nicely, she could have quietly waited, she could have taken the lift. All perfectly valid alternatives to snapping and barking demands.

But I do agree, we shouldn't be diagnosing a woman on the stairs who was just as likely to have been a perfectly NT twat. Not every person who's rude/ridiculous/socially awkward has a disorder, in fact most people don't. Even with a high number of 25% possibly managing a MH issue at any one time, there's a 75% chance that the person is perfectly normal and choosing to act stupid.

The woman politely waiting in the queue and minding her manners is just as likely to have an anxiety disorder as well.

backonlybriefly - examples of me being seriously superstitious without it being a side effect of something else:

1. I'm a pretty good card player, but I only play for "points" (i.e. score written down on paper). Won't play for money, because I'm convinced I'd lose my luck.

1. I can't say "touch wood" unless I can actually touch wood (quite happy with a pencil, doesn't have to be a tree).

I can't believe I've got to my mid-forties without ever hearing about this superstition in my entire life. Is it common? I really have never heard of it and if someone started asking me to go back down when I was half-way up and it was a wide staircase, I would think it very odd indeed and carry on. This seems so weird to me, I used to work in a many storied office and we were always walking up and down the stairs, should we have waited for ages, even if there was loads of room to pass?

Mind-blown!

she thought she would lose her soul, no doubt.

Early 50s and never heard of it either before this thread.

Always worked in large offices (biggest was over 1000 people) and never come across anybody claiming you had to wait. It was generally accepted you walked on the left, but that was just common-sense.

It seems to be common in Leeds, going by this thread. Maybe it's localised? I'm in Scotland.

You are somewhat missing my point. If people can manage their irrationality so as not to be rude, that doesn't mean that someone who can't do that is necessarily "being rude", so much as being "more ill" or more unable to manage their irrationality.

In any case, this woman wasn't RUDE. What she did was make an unusual request. That's not rude, in and of itself. The stuff about her glaring is mere interpretation.

Again, I'm not saying she has a mh disorder or developmental difference - just that she very well might have and to be honest, all this stuff about her being rude/entitled/a twat etc seems far more excessive than suggesting that there might be an underlying cause for an unusual behaviour. She didn't call anyone a fucker or chuck stuff about the place or cause any harm. Out of fear - and whatever the reason for that, that is what is described in the OP -she made an unusual request. Now, I don't have an issue with the OP for choosing not to comply with that request. I do have an issue with judging and castigating the woman for doing something out of the norm.

I do think there is an issue with people sanitising mh difficulties, people equating more moderate forms of mental distress with more severe forms and assuming that, say, if you can manage to be polite with a GAD you should be able to do it with a severe mental health disorder. There are many people with severe OCD who can barely move, let alone "put aside" their fears out of consideration for others. When an individual has a psychotic or manic episode, being considerate or following social expected norms isn't always an available choice and it is part of the presentation of the illness for many.

Ultimately, it's a non-event. A woman who appeared anxious asked for something unusual. The OP didn't feel it was a reasonable request, having already attempted to be accommodating, which is fair enough. However, I really don't see how making that request was rude, twattish, entitled or ignorant. She just asked.

Whereas I think that asking someone to stop going up a flight of stairs, turn around, go back down and then wait until the person at the top descends is rude and entitled.

I'm not sure if it is twattish or ignorant of that woman to think that in a department store there is not, during the period between OP going downstairs and her starting her descent or indeed during the descent itself, going to be anyone else wanting to go up the stairs - but it's certainly not logical.

Is it then symptomatic of a MH issue? Is there an issue with people "sanitising" MH issues? Or perhaps it is symptomatic of a tendency to assume any degree of unreasonableness must be explained by claiming it is due to a MH issue, rather than considering the possibility the person is just selfish/unreasonable etc.

Assuming you weren't intending to stab this lady on the stairs with your sword, YANBU

There are many, many areas of life I would agree with you. Hundreds of them, in fact... and if it were that some woman stood at the top of the stairs and said loudly and confidently, "EXCUSE ME, but I am superstitious so I need you to go down to the bottom so I can pass, thanks, there's a dear" I would agree with you.

The reason I don't think this is about selfishness and entitlement is that the description in the OP is of someone basically paralysed by fear, appearing terribly anxious and acting terribly anxious, then asking for something very unusual.

I just don't see how this was anything other than a fear-based behaviour. I honestly can't see, no matter how many times I re-read it, how this is an "entitled" behaviour if the woman appeared as severely anxious as is described in the OP.

You can be in the grip of an irrational fear and also feel you are entitled t have others do as you wish, because anxiety does not preclude entitlement. It is also possible that being anxious may heighten a sense of entitlement.

We just cannot know what the underlying reasons were in this case and I've tried to provide an alternative to the absolute stated here as if they were facts where they are merely conjecture.

Fear-based behaviour is not in itself a reason to accommodate the request. Each situation has to be judged on its own merits, which is what the OP did in this case, judging her need to continue her journey up the stairs, along with her small child, to be more reasonable than the alternative of reversing her steps, going to the bottom and waiting for an indefinite period of time until the woman felt able to make her way downstairs.

As I said previously, I do not think the poster was in any way unreasonable to continue her journey up the stairs. Not so sure there was any need for eye-rolling and stomping, but it's not a big deal.

I just don't understand the MN definition of "entitlement", I thought it was the belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment. In a moment of pause, an apparently severely anxious woman made a request. Is it an English thing to consider asking for something as a "sense of entitlement"? It sounds to me like she just blurted it out in awkwardness and desperation. She didn't make a demand, she made a request. She didn't start wailing or abusing anyone when the request wasn't complied with, and to be honest, going on what's in the OP, if the response to the request was the OP stomping and rolling their eyes, it would be unusual for someone not to look at the person doing that.

Of course we can't know, but AIBU is not a court of law, just a bit of a chat on a forum.

i wont pass on the stairs, but i've never associated it with shops funnily enough, only the stairs at home!

Yanbu

She should have used lift.

If it was just me by myself then I would have indulged her, but maybe not if I was carting a 3yo along with me and I was stressed - which I probably would be with a 3yo.

Can I just point out that the superstition is about passing on the stairs. Therefore she wouldn't have kept walking down if the OP was walking up.

In the last 2 offices I've worked in, I would say around 75% of people won't cross on the stairs because of this. I work in a professional role. I strongly doubt that 75% of my colleagues over the past 10 years are mentally ill.

In all honesty the suggestions of mental illness seem to me to stem from the fact that a lot of people haven't heard of this superstition before. I can't help but think this thread may have run slightly differently if the woman had asked the OP to hold a ladder up so that she didn't have to walk under it.

napoleon i can't believe you'd never heard of it either! That's nuts.

I've never heard of it either.

This woman cannot take the London underground.

Wow - this escalated.

Thanks for all the thoughts on this. Just to reiterate, that it was not just me and DD, there was also another person asked/told to go down the stairs by the same woman.

I have anxieties about stairs too; I'm afraid of falling down them as I have rather dodgy knees. However, I wouldn't expect everyone to stop what they were doing to accommodate me. I have to get on with it.

My mother had the same superstition and used to get very cross with me when I wouldn't pander to it. Ditto putting umbrellas up indoors (even to dry them) and having knives crossed.

I think it's quite a common superstition. A lot of those people who wait politely at the top of the stairs for you to finish coming up, that's not just politeness it's not wanting to cross on the stairs. It's just that you don't realise. I didn't know about it till I met DH 20 odd years ago, I've since realised that a lot of people do it.

My Granny always used to say it was bad luck to pass people on the stairs so probably because I am used to it from childhood I did think the woman WNBU when I read the OP.

Superstition is often rooted in some sort of common sense safety advice like walking under ladders (paint pot could fall on your head), passing someone on the stairs could make you trip), etc.

On the other hand....I hate supermarkets so this might have irritated me, just on the strength of being desperate to escape the hell hole

The woman should have turned around and gone back up the few steps to the top, not barked at someone else to mess about going up and down stairs for her convenience. so the woman was making a rude request.

I'd have ignored it.

I do feel some sympathy for her as I've seen how superstitions feed anxiety, but because I have, I also have zero tolerance for them. I have a very superstitious parent and it was ridiculous when I was a child. It definitely impacted on other people. Pandering to it only made the fear and anxiety worse. Ignoring it, refusing to comply, actually reduced the anxiety.

I think it is a very unusual superstition and have never encountered it in my 51 years!