I went on a long train journey on Friday afternoon & had reserved a seat. When I had lugged my bags up the length of the very long train to get to it, I found a sleeping toddler in my seat. Her mother asked me to sit elsewhere and she made the same request of the men who had booked the seat she and her DS were in. The men she had ousted stood in the corridor.
There were no seats available at rush hour that were not booked for most of my journey, and I moved twice in an effort to accomodate the family. When my ticket was inspected I was told I would have to move to my allocated seat if another passenger claimed theirs and I heard the guard clearly explaining to the mother that she would have to move if the people who booked her seat requested them. At Newcastle, the seat I was in was again claimed and now there seemed to be no other seats left. Being pregnant and tired, I did not feel able to stand and so asked the woman to move. She was aggressive and confrontational about it and I wound up loudly stating that were I not pregnant, I would stand but had booked a seat because I needed it. She vacated the seat angrily, scattering shitty wipes on the seat as she left.
So - was I being unreasonable to ask her to move? It would certainly have been easier for an obviously pregnant woman, travelling alone, to find a seat somewhere on the crowded train. But I could not face carrying my bags down the train again and was feeling paranoid about bashing my bump!
Was she being unreasonable in expecting other people to accomodate her on a Friday evening given that she had not reserved seats for her DC? The train guard said as much when she asked that he sort seats out for her. I think that had she been polite she would have been perfectly reasonable to try it on. Had she seemed in any way grateful I suspect I would have tried a bit harder to find a seat (e.g. by actually looking in the next carriage).
Or were the other passengers surrounding this being unreasonable in not offering their seats to resolve the situation?