The train is a very unique space. It’s a space where hundreds upon hundreds of people that have never met are coexisting in very close proximity. This is where social etiquette is being tested in real-time. How you behave when you are put in this situation depends on how you have been raised. Obviously, the protagonists of our story have been raised in a very questionable manner, oh well...
not all of them! Amanda is a writer and her work has been featured on sites like The Huffington Post, Mommyish, The Synapse, and Slackjaw. She is a very creative person and she really enjoys doing her job. When you give a creative person like her a tragic situation, you know the results are going to be spectacular.
Besides being a writer, she maintains a very famous Twitter account with thousands of loyal followers.
She shares her unique point of view of the world, in a terribly enjoyable way. But this isn’t even the surface of Amanda, as you'll soon find out.
She is the mother of three children. It’s a 24-hour job with no pay and a lot of responsibilities. As if motherhood is not hard enough, she decided to homeschool her kids. Imagine having to take care of 3 children, be responsible for their education, and work at the same time.
It sounds impossible, but Amanda makes it work somehow. She is even writing a book. So what happed on the train that made Amanda so angry?
One day they had to go from Cheltenham to Nottingham. A small trip that should only last a couple of hours. Amanda decided that the best way to do the trip was by train.
It is fast, reliable and you know that you are not going to find any delays due to traffic. It was on this train that they faced a situation, that they should never have.
When you take the train, you either have the option to book your ticket from before, or you can just buy the ticket from the train conductor. That was the dilemma for Amanda.
They were in a hurry, so she didn’t know if she should take the time to book a ticket or just go for it on the train. It was a Sunday morning, so she thought there is a good chance that the train might be packed.
In the end, she decided to go with the sensible option to book the tickets. Since they would be traveling with some bags and they were 4 people. The best idea was to book a table for four.
Like that her children could do their “homework” while she is helping them. A very sensible plan that in the end never took place because of unexpected “stupidity”.
In the end, they managed to get the train just barely. Once they were inside the wagon, Amanda was thankful that she had booked the tickets. The train was completely packed with people.
It seemed like there were no seats empty. The thought that she had her little island of seats ready and waiting for her was a comforting thought. The problem was that she couldn’t spot this island.
After looking at the tickets and a bit of asking around. She realized that they have gotten into the wrong wagon. The numbering was starting from the second wagon and not the first one, since the first one was reserved for first-class only.
A small setback but this happy family wasn’t going to be brought down by something as trivial as that. Their seats were waiting for them.
Amanda and her kids started moving towards the other wagon. There were so many people on the train, that this wasn’t such an easy task. Bags and people were all over the place making their transversion seem like an odyssey.
Thankfully they managed to get to the space between the two wagons all alive. This is where the first bump on the road started.
The conductor came and asked them why they were standing instead of being seated. Amanda felt that the tone of the conductor was a bit rude, but being the understanding person that she is, she let it go with the thought that he might just be having a bad day.
She politely responded that they were just trying to get to their seats. Amanda even showed them the ticket to make sure that she was going to the right wagon.
The conductor said that they were going to the right wagon and left them with a nod. Amanda didn’t pay any attention to this incident and instead, she focused on getting to their seats as soon as possible. They entered the wagon and looked around for their table but it looks like there were no empty seats.
Amanda was really surprised. Was she in the wrong wagon again?
That wasn’t possible. Even the conductor had confirmed that this was the correct wagon. She started looking at the numbers of the seats to see if she could find the ones that they were supposed to have. After a bit of looking around, they found their seats.
But they were not empty. A couple was sitting there, looking at the view. Something was wrong.
Amanda told her children to hold onto something until she figured out what is happening. Probably the couple was mistaken and they were sitting on the wrong seats. At least that is what she thought.
First, she double-checked that the tickets she had were the ones corresponding to these seats. Everything was saying that this was the case. So it was time to approach the couple.
First, she tried to get their attention since they were really busy looking outside the window. They seemed to not even notice that someone was looking around their seats. Since the “discreet” way wasn’t working, Amanda was going to get more direct with the couple.
There was no other way. She was about to meet some really unique people.
She said hello as politely as possible, and she asked them if they were sure these were their correct seats. She pointed to her children and said that the seats they were sitting on, are the ones that she reserved for her and her family.
So far so good with this conversation, because the couple hadn’t spoken. After they spoke was the problem.
They answered that their reservation didn’t matter. Amanda was shocked. She didn’t do anything to deserve such a rude answer but the couple seemed to think that she did.
Not only what they said was rude, but it was also how they said it that infuriated Amanda. They both had very posh accents, trying to sound superior. This event felt very surreal to Amanda.
She tried to talk to them again to explain her situation, show them the pre-booked ticket, but nothing seemed to work. Actually, the couple stopped paying attention altogether to Amanda and started just staring outside the window. How can a couple pull this off?
Someone is talking to you and you just ignore them completely? What could be in their minds? Amanda had no choice.
She didn’t want her kids to be standing on the train so she told them to sit all together in the 2 remaining seats. Amanda was trying to keep calm and think of a reasonable way to approach this. Thankfully, the moment that she was about to break, a kind gentleman that was sitting next to her offered her his seat.
He had seen what happened and empathized with the mother. This move saved Amanda from a lot of trouble.
She thanked the guy with all her heart, telling him that like that she could at least be next to her children while she was figuring out what to do with this situation. She was thinking of going to talk to the conductor but considering the way he talked to her before she had her reservations.
It was while thinking of what to do that she immortalized the moment.
In this picture, you can see all the anger in the eyes of the 12-year-old girl, starring down at the couple that still tried to ignore them. For a moment it looked like the family was going to have to spend the whole trip like that, but at that moment a train conductor passed.
Not the one from before, a different one. So Amanda thought it was time to try her luck with this one.
She approached him and described to him what happened. She showed to him the tickets as proof and even the children that were still packed like sardines in a box. The conductor took one look at the couple that was still pretending like nothing was happening and knew that there was no point in reasoning with them.
He probably has met this kind of people many times before. He had a different idea of how to fix this situation. Amanda was shocked.
He said to Amanda in a voice loud enough for the couple to hear, that because of the inconvenience he was going to upgrade them to first-class tickets without any extra cost. Amanda couldn’t believe what she was listening to. Not only they were going to get seats, but they were in the first class.
This meant all the space they wanted for themselves. Amazing news, but she couldn’t leave without saying anything to the rude couple.
It was true that these people had made her suffer for no reason, but Amanda wasn’t going to fall to their level. So she was going to say something that poured salt in the wound while being the most polite person ever.
Thanks to her creativity she found the 3 best words she could say at that moment. They picked up their stuff and before going Amanda surprised the couple.
“Enjoy your seats”. These 3 words were the best revenge ever. The phrase “kill them with kindness” just took place.
The couple that thought they could do whatever they wanted and not care about other people saw in action, that by being polite you can get anything you want. We hope that they learned their lesson although we really doubt it.
Amanda and her family had an enjoyable train ride after that in the first class, talking about the event that turned out to be a great example for Amanda’s children. They were the ones that benefited the most from this situation.
But Amanda had as we said, had a tweeter account followed by many thousands of people. It was time to see what they think about this experience.
Amanda logged into her Twitter account and started typing. She wasn’t going to just narrate her life, that wasn’t how she likes to do things. She shared this story as a general tip towards some people.
A tip that when you see a mother with her 3 children and a lot of bags trying to get to their seats, it is not the best idea to just take them without even caring. It’s just plain rude.
Accompanying this post, was the photo that she took of her children cramped in 2 seats. They say that a picture is a thousand words.
In this case, the picture was much more than a thousand words since the tweeter post received more than 2.000 comments and 21.000 likes. Most of them were directed towards the couple that thought they owned the train.
Some people like @nwaby said: "Should have just sat on them....if they don't move from your seat it's their tough luck...". Another creative solution to this problem, but some argued that his would have had the same effect.
If the conductor saw that, he might not have helped them as much as he did. Although an eye for an eye is always tempting.
Amanda has commented since that she wasn’t going to bother booking tickets again if there wasn’t any guarantee that she is going to get her seats. She was lucky that the train conductor was so nice, but the next time she might not be as lucky.
What is she going to do next?
Many people have similar experiences in the metro and they all handled it in different ways. It is clear that when a lot of humans are put in the same space, you can see any kind of behavior.
We just have to be the ones that set an example for Twitter. And not a bad one.