To not move on the train?

[TheCatsMeow]

I was on a very busy packed train with my friend and DS. DS was in a sling, we had the buggy and I was feeding him. We were standing by the doors (no one offered us seats!) trying to feed a screaming baby, penned in by others standing. There was no where we could go.

People tried to push past us to get out the doors and nearly sent DS flying. I firmly asked if they could use one of the other doors and I literally couldn't go anywhere. Cue mutterings and dirty looks!

We couldn't collapse the pram there wasn't room to do and as no one had offered a seat we couldn't move anywhere! WIBU to ask them to use another door?

There's no point wasting your time trying to get OP to take on anyone else POV. She's too blinded by her own self importance and entitlement.

This thread is funny tbh. Lots of people commuting in London answering the thread forgetting that their standard of a 'packed train' are just completely different than the one of let's say someone living in the North of England. Where I am, people standing in the doorway but not in the aisle is a packed train .
And yes no one folds a pushchair either....

It didn't stop the OP from amking more of an effort.
Nor did it stop the other passengers to make more of an effort and get out of the way (in the ailse etc... as others have proposed before)

I feel like the friend is made up because we haven't had any further mention of him/her. But why make them up? I don't get it.

You feel uncomfortable asking for a seat (reasonable request), but you don't feel uncomfortable demanding that people use a different door (unreasonable request). Odd.

But you did expect special treatment. You expected everyone to walk to a different exit because you are a mother.

Which is common decency, I would have done that for anyone who had cases/a buggy/children/elderly with sticks etc.

I didn't fold it beforehand because while I was trying to the train came so I didn't have time.

Then you wait for the next one, when you're in a position to board the train as you're supposed to, with your buggy folded. You don't just get on to be in everyone's way, make no attempt to fix the situation you've created and make it everyone else's problem.

www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Special+Snowflake+Syndrome
Does this link resonate with you?

This is the thread that just keeps giving.

OP, have you ever commuted to work for any length of time via train? I'm curious. I expect you'll say yes whether it's true or not

I know a life-saving, award-winning Consultant Paediatric Oncologist (in the NW) who commutes, daily. What a twat. TWATTY TWATTY, LIFE-SAVING TWAT. Thanks OP, I am sometimes a little enthralled by his brilliance but, by pointing out his TWATness I can stop fan-girling. Phew.

I recently travelled out of London on the first off-peak train of the evening. As me and DS got to the platform DS announced that it looked incredibly busy. As we got to the platform the people were 4/5 deep just waiting to get on to the train. I decided that being squashed on to a packed train wasn't my idea of a Friday night fun jaunt, and that nothing was so important that it couldn't wait another fifteen minutes until I could get the next train, so we moved off the platform to wait for the next one to be announced. About 30 seconds later they closed the platform and prevented anyone else getting on as the train was crowded. DS informed me that there were people standing in the aisles, the doorways, the buffet, and that you couldn't see from one side of the train to another. Now that is a busy train.

Ps. Your friend is as much use as a chocolate teapot.

You know that some commuters are mothers, yes?

Commuters are always rude with no time for anyone IME. Fucks me off.

Often commuters' time will be focused on their own kids, and getting home in time to pick them up before nursery/childminder/after school care finishes. You making them late or getting in the way of them getting off the train and making them risk missing their stop is just

Why should your unwillingness to talk to your fellow travellers mean you inconvenience others? If the train stops are so short you didn't have time to collapse the pram.

No, common decency would have been to wait for the next train, or fold the buggy whilst on the train. Not hold court in an entire section of the train.

Beyond bonkers and entitled OP.

WoodHaven the answers on here are so London centric it's untrue! I've never seen anyone use luggage racks here, no one folds a pushchair and a packed train is one with no seats.

But what if they were a middle-class middle-aged person with a 'stick' as you so describe? From London?

a packed train is one with no seats.

Yeah, no.

This thread is bonkers.

OP, you say upthread that you have just as much right as commuters to get a rush hour train.
Yes, indeed you do. And you have just as much right to get denied a seat, jostled, squeezed and end up with your face in someone's armpit as everyone else on a rush hour tube.

If you are too entitled/stupid/impatient to get a non-rush hour tubes, then you pays your money and makes your choices, I'm afraid.

If seats, space and fellow passengers who will bow and swoop to your mummy status, then get a non-rush hour train. Commuters (or 'twats' as you so charmingly called them) just want to get home. They don't want to do some ridiculous dance to get on their train because you have a point to prove about the validity of your ticket on any train you chose.

Utterly, utterly ridiculous.

goodnight if there isn't enough room for everyone to sit down its pretty packed by standards anywhere that isn't London

Does the fact that some of us have experience of commuting in the London area make our points invalid? All the things I've suggested could have been done by you. Yes of course no one should have pushed past you, but on any train in the country, you just can't block a whole exit.

Is this a good place to ask about the two Mums who had parked their two foldable pushchairs in the bike space on a slow stopping hourly service withoutfolding them up? It seems quite tidy to put the pushchairs on trains questions in one place!

The train was one of those little ones with just one carriage for bikes where you strap them up to the side of the carriage. Clearly labelled as bike spaces.

dh and I got on with our bikes knowing its always a risk that other bikes will be there, but usually bike people dont mind squishing up and making the best of it, but it is possible that you might have to wait for the next train.

There was space for me to stand holding my bike up alongside them and for dh to hold his bike in the entrance without blocking anyone. But I was in the way of the parents being able to reach the bags on the pushchairs where they had stored lots of snacks. There were a lot of glares and some muttering from them. I couldnt work out why they hadnt collapsed their pushchairs - their kids appeared to be preschool age and were running round the carriage and standing up on the chairs, so not very littlies.

apart from the glares and huffing I was getting, was anyone BU?

Technically you are being unreasonable in that you were blocking the door but I can see why you were doing it. I also agree that is impossible to fold a buggy and carry your stuff and manage a small child or two. I never managed to do it and I have 2 children who are at school now.

I also know what it can be like on busy public transport in that sort of situation. People become feral, cram themselves into impossibly small spaces that don't exist and would step over a dead body if it meant them getting on or off the bus, train, tube excetera so I can see that you were getting frustrated with the mentality more than the technicalities of you being in the way.

However, if I had been told to go somewhere els, I think it would have got my back up so I can kind of see why the thread has gone this way. I would not like being told when and where I can get off -especially when it is perfectly logical to see a door and go through it so I'm a bit on the fence with this one

...is just rude. Baby posted for me.

I'm a commuter who is also a mother, and am used to trains that are actually busy. I'm on maternity leave #2 at the moment, which is involving lots of days out with the baby. I avoid peak hour trains like the plague because I can. It's fairer to other travellers and nicer for the baby and me.

At a minimum you should have said to the people who got on behind you 'I can't fit down the aisle but there's plenty of room to stand there, please do squeeze past.' Would have made the train seem less, er, 'busy'.

Do people fold buggies before getting on trains? Isnt it dangerous? Specially with all the massive gaps between the platform and train. I'm in London - zone 3 and never done that. I do avoid rush hour though. Just thinking about logistics - balencing baby on hip with folded buggy in other hand plus having to leap over cavern!