A young couple decided to ruin my trip because I wouldn’t give up my seat, but I had a plan to get even.
It started out quite quietly. To survive the next fourteen hours in the air, I had bought a business class ticket.
As soon as I got situated, a stranger and his wife approached me.
“Hi,” he said. — May I ask you to take my wife’s seat? She works in economics, and we recently got married.
That’s a really simple question. But I’d paid a lot of money for my seat. I wanted to avoid coming across as impolite, so I responded politely:
Sure, no problem. But I had to pay more for my ticket. I’ll switch as long as you cover the $50 difference.
The stranger’s smile vanished. He mumbled, his jaws clenched:
You’ll regret doing this.
As he took a seat, his wife went back to economy.
I assumed that was the end of it. Then the nightmare began.
He started to sneeze and cough loudly. Then he watched an action movie on his phone without headphones. The sound of his chewing was deafening. Even worse, he sat his wife on his lap during the flight.
“We just want to cuddle a bit,” she said as she settled in.
Other passengers stared with disbelief as I tried to remain calm.
When I finally had enough, I did something that put an end to them.
I contacted the flight attendant.
“You can’t put two people in one seat, and you can’t disturb other passengers,” she remarked. — Please return to your assigned seat. You didn’t even pay for this one.
When the wife, clearly embarrassed, went back to her seat, there was at last silence. I won. The man sent me a few angry glances, then slipped on his headphones and looked away for the rest of the journey.
Just because they are newlyweds doesn’t give them the right to be impolite and ruin other people’s experiences. What are your thoughts? Was it the right choice for me?
