A woman has been slammed online after she defended her decision to keep her train seat instead of offering it to an elderly woman.
The woman took to Reddit and explained that she got on a train across the UK and it was a seven-hour journey from London to Aberdeen.
“I booked myself a first-class seat well in advance,” she wrote.
She said that first-class seats are expensive and she decided to treat herself as she had some work to do on the train.
“The seat they’d assigned me was also the ‘priority seat’. Priority seats are the ones at the end of carriages for people with mobility issues due to age or disability,” she went on.
When an elderly woman arrived and asked her to move, she told her that she had already booked the seat.
“She pointed out that the train was full and there were no other seats. I apologized but reiterated that I’d booked the seat and wasn’t going to move,” she went on.
The passenger and the elderly woman were seen by a staff who learned that the older woman also had a first-class ticket but hadn’t booked a seat.
The staff then asked if one of them could step down to an available seat in standard class but the younger woman refused to give her seat away.
“The lady had booked a return ticket, but she hadn’t reserved a specific seat. For those who don’t know how trains work, if you have a ticket but haven’t also booked a seat reservation, it means you can travel on a train, but you aren’t guaranteed a seat unless there’s one available,” the woman continued.
People on Reddit were left divided by the post. One person wrote: “If it was a first-class seat on a plane and someone asked you to move to economy, you’d tell them to f**k right off. Same applies here, in my mind.”
Another wrote: The train company are the a**holes here. They sold the disability seats as the most expensive seats on the train. Those seats should never be sold unless the occupier is disabled. That’s on the train operator. It’s not on you.”
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