Passengers sigh when they remove bag off neighbouring seat on PT

[nfg]

Unless you paid for two seats or have 2 passes for yourself and bag, people should not be using seat next to them for their bag(s)

Yes it is rude to sit next to someone if there’s a clear seat further back

That’s just creepy behaviour.

single seat with bag v single seat without bag further back, tell me what's creapy about asking someone to move their bag v walking further down the bus,

I immediately move away from men who do that because I’ve had a few bad experiences with men sitting next to me (when there are other free seats available)

once I was in my early 20s (but could pass for a teenager) and had this guy make a strange sexually suggestive motion involving his finger in his mouth the whole journey. I sat there feeling sick but worried as no-one was sat close to us.

I kind of froze and hoped he would get off before me - he didn’t. So when the bus got to my stop I said excuse me but he just sat there made me squeeze by and leered at me.

Never again! Nowadays I just immediately say please let me out and then I go sit somewhere else or just stand if my stop isn’t far. It happened the other week when I was sitting in the aisle seat as my stop was up next and there were plenty of empty seats. The guy looked a bit put out 😆

Are you tired?

Nothing at all. I took the implication from your post that you'd target a single seat with bag rather than a single seat further back with no-one in the next seat.

And I didn't say "creepy".

I always worry about the response I may get if I ask a man to move his man-spreading legs.
Have you had any horrible responses?

Doh! It’s obvious when I think about it… 🤦‍♀️ Thanks for clearing that up.

I really wish the particular type of people who do this on public transport were just honest about the real reason they do it.

They do it because British life is crowded, they don’t like sharing. and they get excited that they might “win” themselves more space if they do a land grab and ringfence a large area.

You see it with tables of four on trains. I saw a woman recently who spread out her food and coffee across as much of the table she could, her laptop next to to, her bag on the seat , as if no one would dare sit down. When they did, she glared as if defending “her” space.

i would hazard 90% of the time, it’s just CF behaviour. It’s not about anything else. It’s just “if I can, I’ll try and push people back so I get more space”.

Let’s be honest here

"I do roll my eyes at bullies who passive aggressively demand the seat with the bag on it when the train's still half empty though."

I'm afraid I do this on purpose. If there are two 'empty' seats, I will go for the one with the bag and ask politely to sit there.

If the train is rammed then I’d never put my bag on the seat but if it’s relatively quiet I do mostly because I like sitting alone. I have had someone come and sit on my bag before intentionally to make a point about it being there (they definitely saw the bag was there) which I found ultra rude- the train was not full and there were plenty of other seats.

Why would you choose to sit beside someone if the train is half empty and you could sit alone though? It’s just creepy.

It’s also mean spirited behaviour lol why oh why would you purposefully seek to irritate or alarm someone like this?

I had a woman do that to me just before covid lockdown started and she could have walked a few more steps to two double seaters that were empty . I made the mistake of moving my bag when I saw her looking at the seat.

The woman across the aisle from me was smart and didn’t move her bag and instead stared out the window studiously.

So this woman sat next to me and coughed and spluttered the whole journey. Covid was already on the news by this time but she clearly didn’t care.

If so many people weren’t so happy to be gross on PT, maybe more of us wouldn’t be so averse to sitting next to others.

No, it's not creepy! and I never said a half empty train - just one with a choice of 2 seats.
Actually I'm even more likely to do it if I see someone with their feet up. I just don't want people to get away with thinking they can hog 2 seats.