A mother criticized an elderly couple for taking reserved seats on the train that were meant for their three children.
Amanda Mancino-Williams took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to share her experience traveling on a full train from Cheltenham to Nottingham. The seats were divided into groups of four, with two seats sitting between a table. She reserved a group of four seats for her and her children, but upon arrival she saw an elderly couple sitting in two of them.
in the resurgence threadwhich was initially shared in 2019, claimed that the couple refused to move because their reserved tickets “don’t matter.”
“If a mother with three children and suitcases has four seats reserved for a long train ride and you are sitting in her seats in a full car, don’t tell her in a posh voice that her tickets don’t matter and then say that you’re not moving. and refuse to make eye contact. Don’t be these people,” the first post said.
Mancino-Williams then showed her three children crammed into two seats in a subsequent post, writing, “My 12-year-old son is just staring at this woman.”
He continued the thread saying that a man had offered him his seat. She later spoke to the train driver, who apologized and offered everyone seats in first class. Her mother continued to express how upset she was about not getting the seats she purchased. “I would always give up a seat, reserved or not, to someone who needed it more,” she wrote in the thread. “But for her to tell me that my entries meant nothing and then for her to refuse to acknowledge me? Do people just expect you to sneak around?
She continued: “My kids just told me that while they were sitting across from the couple, the woman told her husband, loud enough so the kids could hear, that ‘even when we take first class, people don’t give up their seats.’ seats, take what’s there. In case she felt sorry for them.”
Shortly after the incident, Mancino-Williams took to X again to respond to commenters who told her her children should have confronted the couple. “This situation is not because my children do not have enough manners to defend their elders. This is a culture of bullying and privilege,” she wrote. “My kids and I were being fair and following the rules and these two weren’t. They immediately went into bully mode when they saw us approaching, clearly aware that those seats were ours.”
The mother continued: “Given how easy it was for the conductor to move us to another car to alleviate the situation, if they had been really in need, I’m sure they would have been moved too. Instead, they broke the rules and tried to make my children and me feel helpless. I do not have time for that”.
After sharing her experience, many people took to the comments to defend the mother. “They were just right-handed boards that felt they could make their way. You and your children were absolutely right,” wrote one commenter.
Another agreed, writing: “The driver should have moved them, their seats were reserved therefore they were their seats period! What’s the point of reserving seats if they’re not going to be kept? I hope you received first class treatment. “It’s disgusting the way they’ve behaved, how bad they are.”
