Plane seats can cause more drama than you might think.
Travelling is always a tiring experience, no matter how far you’re going. Getting to the airport at what is often a ridiculously early time in the morning, battling with airport security, and making it to your gate on time can all leave you feeling frazzled before you’ve even boarded your plane.
So, when you finally get to your assigned seat and sit down, the last thing you want is for someone to ask if you’d be willing to swap seats with them. In some circumstances, you might be inclined to agree to the switch, but most people would rather keep the seat they have – especially if it was booked and sometimes even paid for in advance.
There’s nothing wrong with asking for a seat swap, but those who do should know that they need to take no for an answer if the person they approached doesn’t want to switch.
One recent plane passenger didn’t get that memo, however, after he gave an incredibly rude six-word response to a man who told him he wouldn’t be able to switch seats with him.
In a post on Reddit, the man said he had specifically booked a window seat on his flight because he wanted to “put his music on and just vibe”. So when he boarded his flight and found another passenger sat in his seat, he was confused.
The man “politely” told the passenger he was in the wrong seat, to which the other man said: “Oh yeah, I was hoping you’d switch with me. I have a middle seat like five rows back.”
Baffled by the passenger’s cheek, the man insisted that he wanted his own seat back and had no interest in sitting in a less desirable middle seat. But the other man refused, trying to gain sympathy with a “sob story”.
The man wrote: “At this point, he starts to tell me every bad thing that has happened in his LIFE because clearly he wasn’t that sad of a person but wanted to seem like one. And then he starts crying. Like, loud, over-the-top sobs. The lady next to him looks super uncomfortable.”
A flight attendant then got involved to investigate the commotion, and when she was explained the situation, she, too, asked the passenger to move out of the man’s seat.
The man branded everyone involved “heartless”, but eventually moved back to his own seat. And while the Reddit poster believed that was the end of it, the other passenger confronted him again when their plane landed and hit him with a baffling six-word response about the situation.
He told him: “I hope you have a terrible life.”
Commenters on the post told the man he wasn’t in the wrong for refusing to give up his seat. They added that people should be allowed to ask to swap seats, they insisted the other passenger should have taken no for an answer – especially because it wasn’t an emergency at all.
One person said: “Why do people think taking someone else’s seat is okay? Whenever I fly, I choose my seat and often pay extra for it. Do NOT take a seat that you did not book.”
Another added: “He had the option to pay extra to choose his seat, but instead chose to make a spectacle. You did nothing wrong and have nothing to feel guilty about.”