Train Chronicles #6 - get outa that seat!

Everyday I see violations of subway etiquette ranging from simple not even acknowledging that your big ole purse is banging into someone sitting in front of you to the age old intrusion into personal space when there actually is room in the car. Yup, I see it every day. However, most of the time I can chalk it up to them being inconsiderate or unaware of their surroundings. Very rarely is it just completely rude and obnoxious. THIS morning was one of those rare occasions and the perpetrator was in rare form indeed.

Let me set this up for you: I'm on my regular 2 train headed to work. The configuration on the 2 is that you have un-grooved bench seats facing each other with a pole in between (I've actually seen people "work" that pole before but that's a story for another post). The pole separates the bench into space for three and four. I was sitting on the end of the "three" section by the door. The offending party was standing in front of the door to my right and the car was full of people. The person in the seat next to me, to my left, got up and left the train at the next stop. There were two people in front of the now empty seat and one in front of me, all of which were closer to the seat that this hooligan. As you are reading this, I HOPE you don't think that she recognized this fact and let them have it.

Oh no! She pushed past three people to get to the seat and yelled at the man standing IN FRONT OF the seat to
"Get outa that seat!"
in her gruff, gravely bark of a voice. Everyone was astounded by what an ass this woman was but it gets better. One woman, who was one of the people that were closer to the seat than she was, said
"Can I please sit?"
to which this troll answered,
"Nope!"
The other woman then said
"Fine! LET the pregnant woman stand!"
Now, admittedly, this woman wasn't showing that much so it would have been hard to know that she was with child. But once she made that statement, the right thing to do would have been to apologize for being a jerk and offer the seat to her. This cretin did neither and continued to read a romance novel which probably contained descriptions of things that NO MAN would ever want to do to her!

This was by far the worst train etiquette violation that I have seen in a long while. Have you seen anything worse than this?