Man criticised after refusing to give seat to pregnant woman on train
No one particularly wants to stand up for the whole journey on a train and if we had the choice, obviously we’d sit.
Unless you’re on some kind of weird stand-up-all-the-time fitness regime maybe.
But saying that, the majority of us would give our seat up for someone else – well, most of us would anyway.
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I’m talking for pregnant people or older people or those less able to stand. Or just, you know, someone who looks like they could do with a sit down.
But this guy has been slammed with criticism after refusing to give his seat up for a pregnant woman.
The young man took to Reddit forum ‘Am I the A**hole’ to ask if he was one for ‘refusing to offer my seat to a pregnant woman and asking an old lady to f*** off’.
In a since-deleted post, he explained that after a few stations there were no ‘vacant seats left’ on the train and a pregnant woman entered.
He explained that those seated around him were ‘much older’ but: “I wasn’t sure whether I should offer mine or not.
“I was just thinking through it when an old woman who was seated a little ahead asked her to take mine. She told the woman as in ‘take his seat there, there's enough space for you to sit’.”
This rubbed him up the wrong way as he said to her: “Hey, you can't just ask tell someone else to claim my seat. It's mine, I get to decide."
And he stood his ground as the woman asked if he ‘couldn’t see that she was pregnant’ and he had ‘the ability to stand’.
But the more people stared at him the more he ‘got p***ed off’, he ‘wasn’t having that nonsense’.
“A few others asked me to give up mine too, but I didn't listen. I told the old woman that she has to mind her own business, to not interfere in my affairs, and that I have every right to remain there.
“She looked extremely cross and I probably came out with a bad impression on everyone, but I didn't like her attitude.”
Unsurprisingly, a lot of people commented to say that he ‘should have offered’ his seat.
Others pointed out while the woman ‘shouldn’t have offered anyone else’s seat’, it would be the ‘courteous’ thing to do.
One also wrote: “But you showed a very prominent lack of empathy towards someone in a physically demanding state who did nothing wrong.
"Everyday gestures of kindness improve happiness for the givers and the takers.
“You're the a**hole not because you were obligated to offer, but because of the way you handled the situation.”
And someone else said that the 'epiphany would come' if he ever found himself 'in his time of need'.
Jess Battison