Flying is, for many of us, a complete nightmare. It’s a cramped, expensive, and stressful experience. And if you are a person of size, that nightmare is magnified by a thousand. You are constantly worried about your own comfort, the comfort of the person next to you, and the dirty looks you might get. It’s a minefield of anxiety.
Our story comes from a 34-year-old woman who is, in her own words, obese. She’s working on it, but for now, she’s just trying to navigate the world. And to her absolute credit, she is a responsible, considerate, and proactive traveler.
She was flying across the country for Christmas and, knowing that she is a person of size, she did the right thing. The expensive thing. She booked an extra seat for herself. She literally paid for two tickets to ensure that she would be comfortable and that, more importantly, the person next to her wouldn’t be squeezed.
This woman is the hero we all dream of sitting next to on a plane. She’s a planner. She’s considerate. She sacrificed her own money for the comfort of everyone. She should be given a medal, or at the very least, a quiet, peaceful flight.
But this is not a story about a quiet, peaceful flight. This is a story about how no good deed goes unpunished, especially when an entitled parent enters the chat. Everything was going smoothly until she was seated. Then, the villain of our story appears: a woman with a toddler who looked to be about a year old.
And this mom didn’t ask. She didn’t plead. She didn’t try to negotiate. She told. She looked at our hero and “told me to squeeze in to one seat so her son could sit in the other.”
The unmitigated gall. The sheer, breathtaking audacity. This woman, who paid for one ticket, was demanding two seats, and she expected a complete stranger to give up a seat she had explicitly paid hundreds of dollars for.
Our hero, bless her, did what any sane person would do. She said no. She explained that she paid for that seat for the extra space.
This, of course, is when the mom made a “big fuss.” She got the flight attendant’s attention and then she lied. She told the flight attendant that our hero was “stealing the seat from her son.” Stealing. The seat she had a boarding pass for.
So our hero had to show her boarding passes, proving that she was, in fact, the legal owner of that 18-inch-wide patch of real estate. And here’s where the story gets even more infuriating. The flight attendant, after seeing the proof, still asked our hero “if I could try to squeeze in.”
What?! No. How about you ask the mom to use the lap she was legally required to have her lap child on? Which, eventually, after our hero again refused to be bullied, is exactly what happened. The mom was told to put her 18-month-old son on her lap, which was the plan all along.
Let’s be very clear about something. That child was 18 months old, which means he was a “lap child.” The mom chose not to buy him a seat to save money. She was not in a bind. She was a cheapskate who saw an empty seat and decided to bully the person next to it, assuming she’d be an easy target.
The mom spent the rest of the flight giving dirty looks and making “passive-aggressive remarks.” And our hero, a literal angel, says she feels “a little bad” because the kid looked hard to control.
Stop. Do not feel bad. You are not the ahole. You are the hero. The mom is the ahole. Her lack of planning, her cheapness, and her decision to have a child she couldn’t control on a flight are not your problems. You paid for that seat. You deserved that seat. She can be mad all she wants, but she can do it from her own, single, paid-for seat.
First off, congratulations on the progress you have made in your journey to lose weight and be more healthy. Good for you. Second, you are most definitely NTA. The audacity of this entitled mom (henceforth EM) to demand that you “squeeze in” is absurd and blatantly derogatory. A) She could have asked; B) “Squeeze in”? EM basically called you fat then demanded your seat, which you paid for. If EM wanted a seat specifically for her son, she should have coughed up the funds and paid for a seat for her son, not depend on her passive-aggressive remarks and rudeness to bully another paying passenger into giving up their seat.
Then, the fact that EM gets the flight attendant (FA) involved and, instead of supporting you, the paying customer, FA, too, suggests you “squeeze in”. This was rude, derogatory, unprofessional, and unacceptable.
The passive-aggressive remarks for the duration of the flight are an EM issue, not your issue, OP. Same with the 18 month old. That he was hard to control is not your issue.
I am sorry you had to suffer insults and such rudeness from both EM and the airline by way of the FA. You paid for the space and both EM and the airline, by way of of the FA, demanded you “squeeze in” and offered you no form of compensation for the sunk costs. This is preposterous and there is absolutely no way you are TA.