A woman on Reddit has received 11,000 reactions and nearly 6,000 comments after she shared a recent travel dilemma — and continues to appear baffled that she might have done something wrong on a bus ride.
“I ride the bus because I can’t afford a car, insurance, gas, etc.,” wrote the woman, who did not share her location.
She said she is 19 years old and lives in the U.S.
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“A couple [of] days ago,” she wrote, “I was on a bus that wasn’t that busy. Not empty, but there were multiple unused seats and no one had to stand.”
She added, “I had just gone shopping and had heavy bags that were hard to carry and hardly fit in front of my legs.”
So, she said, “I sat in one seat and placed my bags on the seat next to me, essentially taking up two seats on my own.”
The woman went on, “Since it wasn’t crowded when I got on, I didn’t see an issue, and like I said the bags were super heavy and hurt to carry, so I wanted to set them down.”
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And then things began to change, she revealed.
“The bus ride was kind of long and as it went on, more and more people got on the bus. It eventually got pretty crowded to the point where some people had to stand up.”
However, the young woman detailed, “I didn’t ever move my bag or offer the seat to someone.”
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She said that in her “experience, most people don’t want to sit next to strangers anyway, and a lot of the time people will end up standing instead of sitting in an empty seat next to someone they don’t know.”
She continued, “No one said anything to me.”
Finallly, she said, “at the last stop” — which was the bus station, she said, when everyone was getting off — “someone passive-aggressively told me, ‘You could have moved your bag and not been inconsiderate and rude. Everyone wants to sit, not just you.’”
The woman added, “Or something along those lines. I didn’t really respond because I didn’t know what to say,” she said.
The Reddit writer said further, “The person who said that never asked me to move my stuff, and if they did, I probably would have.”
She went on, “So I don’t understand how I was being rude?”
Her final thoughts were these: “They could have asked during the ride instead of insulting me after it was already done. Buses are also generally first come, first serve, so I think my behavior was normal.”
The Reddit community unloaded on the writer — with one person saying bluntly, “How can you write [this] and think you aren’t [rude]?”
Someone else responded, “You don’t wait for someone to ‘ASK’ you to do the right thing.”
Said another commenter, “You saw the bus was full and didn’t move your bags. That’s exactly what rude a–holes do.”
Yet another commenter took the time to try to deliver a detailed etiquette lesson to the original poster.
“I would have asked you to move the bag — but not everyone is comfortable with that situation with a stranger. What if they asked you and you said no? It would create an awkward situation for them.”
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This commenter went on, “Not everyone wants to risk an awkward situation with a stranger in a confined space like a bus. You shouldn’t expect someone to have to ask you. If the bus is crowded, you don’t take up more than one seat. Period.”
The person also noted, “You weren’t when the bus had multiple empty seats. But once more people get on, you [should] be mindful and put the bags on your lap or the floor. Or at the very least, offer the seat to people standing next to you, then maybe keep your bag there if they say no.”
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Someone else delivered a no-holds-barred assessment.
“It’s fine to have your stuff on the seat when the bus is empty, but you can use basic courtesy when people are standing without a seat available,” said this person. “You’re even worse for your comment that if they asked you ‘probably would have’ moved your things. ‘Probably?’ Get over yourself.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to a clinical psychologist for comment on the situation.
