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So much for common courtesy.
By Alexandra Blogier
Last updated on Mar 07, 2024
When it comes to common decency, a little bit goes a long way — as one college student learned on her daily trip home from class.
She wrote into Reddit, wondering if she was in the wrong for her behavior on a public bus.
The woman refused to give up her seat to a pregnant woman on a bus because she was ‘tired’ and ‘got there first.’
As context, the woman said that she often uses public transportation to get to and from college and that she lives in Argentina. According to a travel agency focused on Argentinian trips, this is relevant because the busses in Argentina specifically reserve the seats at the front of the bus for pregnant, elderly and disabled passengers.
At the college student's stop, there were “plenty” of available seats, and she chose a seat in the back of the bus. After a few stops, a pregnant woman boarded the bus. She “ignored the first seats, which are priority seats” and kept walking to the back of the bus.
When it comes to bus seat etiquette most people would agree that pregnant people and the elderly get first pick of the seats — but it doesn't always play out that way, as this story and many other social experiments online have proven.
“At the time the bus was crowded enough [for there] to not be any seats available,” said the student. The pregnant woman asked the woman sitting down if she could give her the seat she was in. “I told her no because I was tired and wanted to sit down,” the college student explained, adding that the pregnant woman should look for seats at the front of the bus which were designated for her.
The pregnant woman responded by calling the student a jerk, explaining that she was eight months pregnant.
The woman edited her original post to say that “every single seat was taken; I told her to go get one of those seats since people who don't need them take them anyway when the bus is crowded.”
Eventually, “Somebody else gave her a seat,” the woman wrote, which she noted made her feel guilty for ignoring bus etiquette and common courtesy.
Despite her creeping guilt, the college student doubled down on feeling "entitled" to the seat she chose.
“I also don't know if the people in the priority seats were people who really needed it,” she said, wondering why the pregnant woman didn’t ask for one of the priority seats.
While it is kind to offer your seat to someone who may need it, it's not mandatory.
As one person pointed out in the comments, “you don’t owe it to pregnant people, but you also [could] just take a small moment to decide to be kind.”
Small gestures go a long way, and it's always respectable for people who are able to stand on public transportation to do so. That said, this kindness goes both ways. While someone in the comments wrote that “Everyone on a bus is freaking tired” in defensive of the pregnant woman, in reality, that same sentiment can be used in the college woman's favor, as she did exactly what she was supposed to do: stay out of the seats designated for pregnant women.
While this woman in particular appears able-bodied, as someone in the comments noted, “just because you can’t physically see someone’s disability doesn’t mean they don’t have it.”
“Kindness costs you nothing, and you may well need someone’s kind gesture one day,” commented someone else, getting to the crux of the issue. While we don’t necessarily owe people anything, the compassionate reaction to that all-too-common situation would have been to stand up for the person who needed the seat — whether that's you or someone else.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers celebrity gossip, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.