Baby Boomer Insists A Woman Move Chairs In An Empty Waiting Room For An Oddly Entitled Reason
Blvdone | Shutterstock As a young woman sat in a doctor’s office waiting room, a woman approached her with an unusual demand that demonstrated the entitlement seen all too frequently in the older woman's generation. Apparently, the woman was seated in the chair that the Boomer wanted to sit in — and that was simply unacceptable.
The older woman insisted that the other woman was in her seat and wanted her to move
"I'm sitting in a doctor's office waiting room with 30 chairs in it. Four chairs have been taken, so there are 26 empty chairs," the woman said, setting the scene in an online forum.
As she was waiting to be called, a woman who appeared to be a Boomer walked in and checked in at the reception desk.
“I was not paying attention to her, but I began to feel eyes boring into me,” the original poster wrote. “I look up and she is making a face at me.”
The woman proceeded to bypass 12 empty chairs and approach the seated woman. "That is where I sit. You are in my seat,” she said to her.
Lucashallel / Canva Pro
“I just nervously giggle and go back to my browsing,” the young woman admitted. “She stands in front of me, obviously waiting for a reply from me. I give her none. She huffs and plops down next to me.”
Still, the older woman was not done.
“She begins to explain that is where she sits when she comes here,” the woman wrote. “I just started browsing through online threads. And that is what finally made her leave me alone.”
Some were stunned by the Boomer woman's entitlement, while others shared hypothetical responses
“I didn’t realize they assign seats in waiting rooms,” another commenter sarcastically wrote.
Some commenters shared how they would have responded, had the woman approached them.
“Unless you work here at the Doctor’s office, you don’t have a designated seat…” one user suggested. “Well, you can have it when I’m done with it,” another wrote.
One commenter took a more comical approach: "I would have responded like I was talking to a toddler in that annoying sing-songy, overly-cheerful way; 'Oopsie, this seat is taken! You will have to choose another seat today. Can you see another chair you can sit in?'"
When it comes to public spaces, we all have our preferred spots that we enjoy, whether it be the table by the window in the coffee shop or the park bench closest to the pond. While we may think of these as our own, it does not mean that they belong to us and only us. If we see that our favorite table or bench is already occupied by someone else, we do not have the right to tell them that it is “ours” and expect them to leave.
A waiting room in a doctor’s office constitutes a public space, and no one is entitled to a specific chair, especially when there are 26 other seating options to choose from!
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.
