CTA Tattler

Of course you wouldnt offer it if she weren't pregnant...it wouldn't make much sense to offer your seat to everyone, the train would just be musical chairs.

Some people are so stupid they should be taken out of the gene pool, but unfortunately this bitch is already getting busy passing it on.

Wow. Too bad you tuned her out; who knows what else she'd have said! It's almost worth the abuse to get a glimpse into what bees are buzzing around in that particular bonnet.

It was very kind of you to offer the woman your seat. I hope this incident doesn't deter you from ever doing that again. There's no excuse for her treating you the way she did.

Many years ago "Dear Abby" had some advice for a similar situation when a man offers to hold the door for an unappreciative woman. Two variations of those ideas: "Ma'am, I didn't offer you the seat because you are pregnant, I offered it because I am a gentleman" and my favorite, "Ma'am, I didn't offer the seat because of your condition, I offered it because of your age". Hah!

not to change the subject....but has anyone heard the new CTA gossip for the month? The feds looking at CTA's top payrollers and their political ties?

You did the right thing anyway! I get the impression she just *wanted* to be rude. Maybe she hates people. I don't know.

I agree with katmusic2006. Sometimes you run into people who are just itching be, well, jerks wherever and whenever they can.

Even more terrifying than the thought of her gene pool being passed on -- this person is presumably going to _raise a child_? How can that possibly end well? The poor kid.

Let's just hope this was out of character for her -- maybe hormones were on the rampage and she just found out that her career path had been diverted into the sewer on account of being pregnant and people had been rubbing her stomach all day, and she was weary of being defined first and foremost by her pregnancy. It's no excuse for being so rude, but it would be somewhat less awful if it were an aberration rather than a habit.

I feel sorry for the kid she’s carrying. What a stupid fucking bitch she was to you. Don't worry about it. Continue to be nice to people b/c somebody raised you right!

I think we have discussed this before, but I have had similar experiences. It is an act fraught with danger. Fantastic response by you though.

Margaret and T.Taylor - Yeah, I'm not going to let one isolated incident with one mega-rude woman change the way I act towards other pregnant women and elderly people on the train in the future.

I felt genuinely bad after I got home, I mean, I literally cursed out a pregnant woman who I've never met before, how many people can really say that they've done that before? But given the circumstances, and the comments I received from my coworkers and friends, I believe I reacted accordingly and was justified in saying what I said to her.

As far as hormones go, being a male I will never know the joys (heh) of being pregnant and having a rush of hormones and emotions flow through you for 9 months. Be that as it may, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that things get swollen, backs hurt, feet and ankles ache, and standing up for 30-45 minutes on a crowded train kinda sucks when you're pregnant. The woman most definitely could've gotten more out of the seat than I would, and I more than gladly went out of my way to make her post-work day train ride more comfortable.

However, I don't think her over-active hormones/emotions gives her any sort of right or excuse to act the way she did towards me, or curse me out the way she did to me or to anyone else. ESPECIALLY when all I was trying to do was make her train ride a little more comfortable with an act of common courtesy.

I too would hope that her actions on the train were out of character for her, because if they weren't, I really, really do feel bad for the child she'll be raising.

You did what i would have done in the same situation. Although being originally from Chicago this incident doesnt surprise me at all. Thanks for having the decency to offer this lady a seat since she was pregnant. Here in the south every man offers a lady a seat and/or open a door for her no matter what, but when i go back to Chicago i am always hesitant to do this. Good job Vic.

Over they years I've offered my seat to women *and* men who seemed to need it more than me for various reasons. Most of the time the answer was no. I leave it at that because I figure they had their chance and I'd rather be sitting anyway. Now if one of them had changed his/her mind and asked me for my seat, I would've given it to him/her because my offer was sincere.

In pretty much any situation, not just this one, I've found that if people (myself included) don't want what you're offering, they don't appreciate it if you insist. There are times where the refusal is out of politeness and you're expected to re-offer, but it's hard to tell when those occur, and it just confuses things anyway. So I just ignore the possibility or say "let me know if you change your mind".

On a lighter note, this reminds me of the old joke of Boy Scouts, trying to do their good deed for the day, "helping" an old lady across the street who's screaming "But I don't want to cross the street!" :)

Jim, or maybe the woman in question was just a fucking bitch, as Vic so rightly called her.

I pity her child.

You shouldn't have turned your headphones up, though. That's rude to the people sitting around you. It's very distracting when you're trying to read and there's loud music playing.

This entire story was already posted on another website. Do you have stairs in your house Vic?

I've never understood why people get so upset over "loud" headphones. I'm not denying that they can be annoying, but I don't see how it's anymore distracting than, oh, the overwhelming rumble that the train itself makes, especially in the subway. What about people talking, either person to person or on a cellphone? Why isn't that upsetting to people who get pissy about headphones? If it DOES make them pissy, then what do they expect riding public transportation? Should everyone cater to their demand for silence? Why should their desire for silence override anyone else's right to talk or listen to music, again, on a form of transport that's loud as hell with or without any passengers at all?

Too many people think that lack of civility is everyone else's shortcoming. They feel as if they are bothered or inconvenienced, without any awareness of how their own actions annoy others. Sometimes they just don't give a shit about the comfort and safety of other people in general. Personally, I wish people would be more aware of themselves and moderate their excessive behavior, whether it's aggressive or passive. It could mean that they move to the center of the train when it's crowded. It might mean moving their bag out of the way without someone having to ask. Maybe that means turning headphones down a little. Maybe it means not shouting a conversation or squealing so loud that it terrorizes dogs for miles around. But maybe it also means not getting riled up when the slightest peep from a fellow rider reaches your ears.

By the way, the original poster of this story never said that he turned up his volume to the point that anyone else could hear it. Personally, I use ear plug style headphones that let me crank the sound up near maximum without any spillage. And my old music player and headphone combination was too weak to be heard by anyone else even at it's loudest output, except for when the train was stopped. So it's plenty likely that you just scolded someone for nothing.

Goony McGoon Goon: I am protected :v:

And MDS, nowhere in my original post did I ever say that I cranked my mp3 player to max volume, I simply put on my headphones and listened to my music, as opposed to hearing the woman any more than I had up to that point.

wow, great story. i've experienced similar things and now i always hesitate before giving up my seat. i've offered my seat to the elderly and women before, but sometimes they just ignore you like an idiot, and then some other guy will just take your seat without even asking.

people need to learn how to appreciate these things. the number of good people gets lesser and lesser every day because of these reasons.

Wow what a bitch! I actually had a perfectly healthy, not pregnant, woman yell at me..."hey white girl, gimme that seat!!" when the train was practically empty. I just gave her a blank stare and went back to looking at the window while she cursed and ranted about something (probably me) to her friend.

Yesterday I had a horrible day and my back and feet were aching something terrible. All I wanted to do was sit down. The train pulls in and this 20 something guy nearly knocks me down in a mad dash to get THE ONLY OPEN SEAT in the car. I'm healthy enough to stand but I was annoyed that he would push me out of the way just to get that damn seat. People can be so damn rude sometimes.

Vic, that wasn't you yesterday, insisting I take your seat on the Brown line, was it? Whoever this guy was, there was no turning him down. At first I thanked him and said no, I'm fine standing, but he wouldn't hear of it. So I finally sat down just so he'd shut up. I wasn't rude, though, I thanked him and sat down.

jk1, you make some really good points. In fact, I withdraw my previous statement entirely. Even though I always read on the train and prefer quiet, it's wrong of me to expect silence at the expense of those who prefer activities that make noise.

The DC Metro is the classic passive-aggressive behavior wonderland. People are always "accidentally" nudging each other and rolling their eyes and sighing, etc. I used to ride daily with a coworker. Once we were on a very crowded evening train and we were talking quietly about our day. By quietly I mean just above a whisper. A woman next to us reading a book kept pulling her book down, looking at us and sighing loudly. After the fifth or sixth time she did this, I looked at her and asked if we were bothering her. "She meekly (no eye contact) replied that she was trying to read. I said, "sorry, this is a train, not the library."

On the other hand, another time two young lawyers got on the metro and began talking about work. One of them was very loudly broadcasting to the entire car his successes as a lawyer. The other was clearly embarrassed but probably didn't now the guy well enough to shush him. This went on for five or six stops. Finally, as they exited, a woman politely tapped the offender on the shoulder and recommended he make time in his busy case schedule to make an appointment to get his hearing checked. It was priceless because her tone was delivered as though purely out of concern for his well being. He was dumbfounded and his friend was probably grateful.

Yeah, he's a real prince. He swore at a woman and all the posts are saying he did the right thing. Wow. What was in his heart when he decided to give up the seat in the first place? Was it, "I'm going to take joy in serving someone else", or was it, "I'm probably going to get a big thank you and really feel like I did a great thing after this."? If it was the former, maybe he could have just vacated the seat and made it available for her without drawing attention to himself. If it was the former, I doubt he would have tried to shame her in front of the whole train and draw more attention to the situation. If it was the former, I doubt he would have posted this and to draw even more attention. Genuinely serving others means putting the interests and needs of others before our interests.

So according to "C" it's okay for a woman to swear at and draw negative attention to a man but a man can't give her a taste of her own medicine?? Good to know!

c commented: "If it was the former, maybe he could have just vacated the seat and made it available for her without drawing attention to himself."

How do we know she would have taken it? Chances are good that some other person would have slid their ass into that open seat, possibly even pushing this woman to the side (then she really would have had an excuse to let him/her have it). Vic is the only one who really knows what his motives were for offering the seat in the first place, but for either motive you listed- selflessness or self-gratification, I don't think he was particularly looking to be insulted in public (which yes, does not give him the right to insult back but we could argue that point for any situation).

But of course C, the only thing running through my head as I offered my seat to the pregnant woman was "I'm a huge prince, I rock like no other person on Earth has ever rocked before, and I will post about my awesomeness on the internet." Yeah...

My motives at first were simple: my fat-ass doesn't need the seat nearly as much as the pregnant woman. I didn't do it to feel as if I was the second coming of Gandhi or Mother Theresa. So to recap: I offered the woman my seat. The woman calls me stupid and/or deaf (not sure, she gave me the choice of being either "fucking deaf" OR "stupid." Great lady for giving me the ability to choose which one I thought best applied to me). I figured I'd just sit back down, let it be, and let her comment pass (which is hard enough to do, try doing so when a stranger calls you deaf and stupid in public). However, the woman then gets in my face AFTER I had decided to drop it, so I cursed the lady out in return, because I felt that I didn't deserve that and she was, like I told her, being quite a bitch.

Should I have just kept my mouth shut after she cursed me out first? Who knows, probably. Hindsight is 20/20. I didn't expect to get a standing ovation from the train for giving up my seat to her, as C would like to think, but I sure as hell did NOT expect to get cursed out in public by the woman for trying to make her commute a little more pleasant.

Here's the answer! People are weird!
I am an able bodied over-forty woman. I was on the Red Line downtown and offered my seat to a woman who was 60-ish and looked sweaty and tired. She didn't take up my offer, instead proceeded to announce to everyone that I was at least as old as she was and how insulted she was.
Maybe we should wear signs - 'Will not bite your head off if you show me any kindness'.

the poster above who wondered why we dont want to hear the music coming out of his headphones... well its VERY ANNOYING when you hear that unique tinny sound when you have lousy headphones,, its enough to drive you nuts. Thats why.

Screw everyone on the CTA. Screw people who think they have the rigfht to a seat, pregnant or not. Screw the F-in homeless people who piss and crap all over the train on my dime. I'm getting on, I'm sitting down and I could care less who stands and who complains. You want a seat? Get on the train first. Otherwise shut the hell up.