First off I am ND so not the most... socially aware sometimes, so I'm not sure if I messed up. But this has been going around in my head all day.
It's half term so I took the kids to a tourist attraction that has, among many exhibits, a train that goes back and forth across the site for no extra cost. We got in with 15 minutes until the next train left so I took the kids to the loo and joined the queue with about 5 minutes to go. We were last in the queue when they started letting us in but a lady and a child joined behind us as we were filing on to the platform.
On the platform people are all climbing onto the carriages at once and a single lady just in front of me had stopped/ was making no effort to board the train so we walked past her and I sat the kids and me into an empty row. I expected everyone would get on as there were people still boarding in the next carriage. I then heard the lady who was behind me shout 'we only didn't get on because they jumped the queue' angrily pointing at me as she walked past our row and I was initially confused as I knew she'd been behind me not in front, but then I saw the lady who had been in front of us and stopped was walking out with her. It was mortifying. I hate a scene. There would have been space for one more person to sit, but not three.
Presumably they were having a place saved for them but they hadn't asked to come forward to join someone and if they had ever been in the queue and left it it would have been before we arrived there. I may have been a bit clueless reading why the first lady stopped however. I didn't get off the train- by that point they were leaving the platform and it felt like it would be quite a spectacle to unload my two small kids and get them back.
Was I being unreasonable or were they? I don't know how I was supposed to know they considered themselves in front of me in the queue when they didn't communicate anything to me before that accusation and physically they were walking in behind us. But the way she shouted she felt sure I'd been really rude and I'm worried maybe I was. Should I have gotten off the train and tried to get them back to take the seat once I realised they were with the lady that was in front of us? I sort of froze and then the moment had gone.