Subway Encounter Woman Refuses to Give Up Seat to Mom with Young Child—Here’s Why

The woman wrote on Reddit, “She walked straight toward me and waved her head for me to get up.”

A woman says she wasn’t going to give up her subway seat to a mother who was holding her child, but then she changed her mind.

A 23-year-old woman wrote on Reddit’s “Am I the A——?” that she was “totally exhausted” from a long day at work.

“It takes me about 50 minutes to get to work.” “Thank goodness I got a seat. I was about to fall asleep when a woman and her son, who looked about eight years old, got on at the next station,” the woman wrote.

“She came straight at me and waved her head for me to stand up.” “She didn’t say anything, and I got the sense that she was just waiting for me to move,” the woman wrote. “Something about her face set me off, so I told her straight out, ‘No.'”

The Reddit user said the mother “seemed surprised” and “began talking about how someone my age should give up their seat for a mother carrying her child.”

“She also made a few comments about how the younger generation is disrespectful,” the lady said.

“A few people gave me dirty looks, and I felt awkward, but I stayed in my seat,” she said.

In an update, the woman said that she was in a “regular seat” and not a “priority seat.” She also said that she “saw the child running and jumping around” at other times during the trip.

Also, she said, “He seemed fine.”

That person then said, “Someone else eventually offered her a seat, and after that, she just sat down and started talking on her phone.”

The woman said that as she walked home, “I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe I was in the wrong.” At the time, she thought she had done the right thing.

Well, most of the people who commented said she wasn’t.

“The woman chose you out of everyone else sitting there.” One response said, “She decided right then and there that you didn’t need that seat.” It also said, “If there was a reason her child needed it,” she could have always said that, or she could have just asked the woman to get up.

“Plenty of young people have invisible disabilities or injuries,” said someone else. It’s not fair to judge someone’s failure to give up their seat based on how young they look, they said.

A third user said they asked their “Boomer” mother for advice to get a more experienced view.

“I asked my ‘boomer’ (oh, I hate that name) mom what the rules were back in her day,” the reviewer wrote. “She said you stand for disabled, elderly, and pregnant women, when I told her this story she just laughed and said any child that could be carried could sit on their parent’s knee and she would always have made us stand for any adult to sit on a local bus/train/subway (Can confirm she used to do that).”

Source: Woman Says She Was Approached on the Subway by a Mom Carrying a Young Child. Why She Didn’t Give Up Her Seat