Would You Have Moved?

[WizardLizard86]

This is obviously a trivial matter in the grand scheme of things and if anything it has given me a laugh this afternoon but part of me is not sure if there’s some sort of etiquette here I’m missing.

I was with my four year old, walking up the hill to the playground along the path (but the road is access only so there’s rarely a car and it’s wide enough for two people to pass each other ) when he complained of a stone in his welly, so we moved to the side to lean against a wall to sort it out. There was a woman coming down the path on that side but at least 10meters away.

I don’t know if you’ve ever played the Sims but sometimes they malfunction and keep trying to get round an object by sort of repeatedly walking into it. As I was fishing around in the welly for the aforementioned stone, this woman walked straight into me and sort of just stayed there. Obviously I was all ‘hello? What are you doing?’ And she said ‘excuse me but I was walking on this side so you need to move out of the way so I can carry on’

I refused and said she should just go round us but she point blank refused and there was a bit of verbal argybargy until I said ‘look, you have two options, pass us or wait until I’ve finished doing what I’m doing and then I will move ’ and she just waited and told me I was incredibly rude and needed to learn some manners. When I did move (having made sure I checked the other welly too and readjusted my son’s socks) she clapped and said ‘see! You are learning!’ So I told her she was extremely strange and you can’t expect to use a path without ever moving to the other side of it.

Was I in the wrong 😂 do you pick a side of the path and expect to march along it come hell or high water?

She was youngish with no obvious walking impairment just FYI.

Some people have ridiculous ideas.

I told a man the other day that I didn't appreciate his "they're friendly" dogs sniffing around me and if he's going to have them off leads he needs to teach them some recall. His solution was that I shouldn't walk where people walk with dogs.

She sounds entirely bonkers!!

Was she late middle age, grey hair, slim?
Looks like she may be a 'church-goer' as we say up north 😁

The reason I ask is because I 'know' several women out and about on my dog walks (they never have a dog) in the supermarket, post office, gym etc and they are always gunning for a fight for some reason.

It seems to be a thing 😶‍🌫️

Who are the silent 3% who think @WizardLizard86 was remotely unreasonable?! Come on Vegetable Lady - show yourself, explain yourself!

@WizardLizard86 what a deranged lunatic!! Clearly a screw loose...

But OMG why do Sims do that???? And then sometimes they even walk through people.

And one time, when I left my game running to go pee, my sim set fire to herself when cooking and her own parents (guests) just stood there not extingushing her and by the time I reached my computer mouse the death thing was happening. Argh.

Seems to be a thing now that you "simply have to " get out of the "entitled ones" way, no matter what you are doing or even if you have children with you .
I love the faces they pull too, twisted mouth in a thin, tight line and a body full of tension while they wait for you to move.
Anyone got suggestions of what to say when this happens, without the risk of escalating!

What a loony. And I’m sorry, if she had clapped at me and said I’m learning I’d have covered my kids ears and told her to get fucked.

I thought it was just us Northern ones thst were "queer" (in the nowt as queer as folk sense)

Clearly not. I would have been crying laughing if she stood there waiting rather than moving on. Might have done a dance or a bit of Shakespeare to entertain her while she waited 😂😂😂

What an absolute fucking weirdo. Can’t believe she literally walked into you… the sims reference is top tier btw 😂

You definitely didn't do anything wrong. I find people these days are more and more self-centred. I'll often be walking along a pavement and there will be people walking towards me three-abreast, taking up the whole pavement, I'll go as far to the side as I can but they will not move and will just walk right into me...I don't know what they expect me to do melt into the wall? 🤷🏼‍♀️😂

Absolute weirdo! 😂

But the clapping and comment about learning would have resulted in me unleashing my fury upon her.

People can be so odd. I was looking for something in the supermarket the other day, and someone said excuse me, so I stepped aside as you do to let them grab the thing they want and they just stood where I had been and started browsing the shelf, picking things up and putting down, it was so odd. I ended up asking them to move so I could get what I wanted and they seemed most put out!

Having spent 16 years out daily with my child in a wheelchair, I can say with some certainty the group that reliably walk into, stretch past, and even move my daughter are older women. Young women are generally just fine. The best group by far are teenage boys.

That would have made me chuckle too.

But at her sheer madness! That’s just nuts and I cannot for the life of me get why she genuinely felt that was her side 🤷‍♀️

Yeah my ds is a wheelchair user and the number of people who continue walking 3/4 side by side at him amazes me.

im not even sure where they expect him to go as it’s not like he can step off the pavement into the the road or flatten himself against a wall sideward (which they seem to expect the rest of world who have the audacity to be on the same street to do!) 🤦🏼‍♀️

She was probably around my age (40) quite well presented (and not a British accent, that’s by the by and I didn’t mention it in the OP but I was wondering if there was some cultural etiquette I am not aware of. Like you move out of the way for a woman with nicer hair or something. She did have nice hair 😅) it was the absolute conviction she had that I was being rude by stepping onto her path that flummoxed me briefly. I had to think for a moment but then thought no, I’m not in the wrong here at all, I’ll stand (well, kneel, with one hand rooting around in a dinosaur welly) my ground. I did point out that I was trying to assist my child and it was no bother for her to simply walk past and go on with her day, but she said ‘it’s not about having a child, it’s about the fact that I was walking and you chose to get right in my way, it’s not how we behave’

Even my little boy was confused and he has a very prevalent moral compass and she’s of righteousness, as do most four year olds 😂

*sense of righteousness

I found this thread so funny last night. Thanks OP.

PMSL. Chaos 🤣

I’m with you OP and I’m too accommodating usually - like I’ll move even when it’s obvious they should (eg the path is wide enough for 2, but instead of making the couple walking towards me going single file, I’ll step into the road to let them past, that kind of thing). It’s no skin off my nose to give way to people, and most people smile and say hello and thank you to me in response to me smiling and saying hello or good morning to them, so I’m “rewarded” in my mind with a little bit of human interaction.

In the circumstances you describe I absolutely would not have moved. In fact, I’d have stubbornly stayed there once sorting the welly and if my child asked why we weren’t moving, I’d have told him we were waiting for the rude woman to either apologise for her attitude or move out of our way, and said “because everyone knows adults move closer to the road, not children, to keep them safe from traffic”.

Might have reminded her she’s not some princess that the world revolves around and would have shown my child we don’t give in to someone just because they demand it. You had made a reasonable decision to move there to clear the stone out of the welly, she could have easily walked around you.

That said, if I had been you and she had only been about 10 metres away, I would have waited until she had walked past us as that would have been a matter of seconds for you, so maybe she thought you were rude cutting in front of her so close and wanted to make a point (I’m going to assume that was what the people who said you were unreasonable thought). Unless you’re rubbish with guessing distance or it was a typo and she was more like 100m away, I really don’t understand why you didn’t wait.

But you didn’t wait and in the encounter you describe she was acting like a loon. Regardless of whether you should or should not have moved there and stopped, she should have simply gone around you.