SINGAPORE: A TikTok user wrote about her unpleasant experience with an elderly man on a flight home to Singapore, asking in the caption, “Would you prefer crying baby or inconsiderate old people?”
The content creator, who goes by @goofyfeline on the platform, said in a video from Oct 6 that when she was on her Singapore Airlines flight home from Sydney, there were two babies crying near her, which was already something to deal with.
However, the bigger problem appeared to be the old man who was seated directly behind her aisle seat.
First, he kept gripping her headrest, but she thought it was a balance issue and therefore did not say anything. However, when seeing the man’s fingers frequently so close to her face bothered her, she told her husband about it, and he raised the headrest, so the uncle behind her let go.
Next, during the flight itself, the man allegedly kept forcefully pushing his screen, perhaps while he was playing games, which meant that her head kept moving as well. Still, she let it go.
Halfway through the flight, she wanted to take a nap and therefore reclined her seat. The man behind her complained to a flight attendant about this but was told that the post author has a right to recline her seat. Unsatisfied, the man then reportedly held the back of her seat and tried to push it upright.
“In what world do you think this is ok? Even if that worked for you, what makes you think that the person in front of you will not turn around and say something?” she fumed. However, she decided at that point that she would put her seat back in the upright position after her nap. In the meantime, the man went to the bathroom. When he returned, he just stood beside her seat and stared at her, apparently unhappy that he would have to squeeze into his seat since her seat was still reclined. He only sat down when the woman’s husband stared at him.
“Is it because I’m a woman that you think I’m easy to bully?” she asked, wondering if he would behave the same way if a man sat in front of the uncle.
Because at this point she was so aggravated, she decided to just keep her seat reclined for the rest of the way home (or at least until everyone had to return their seats to the upright position before the plane landed).
Sitting near inconsiderate people on an already cramped and uncomfortable flight can be a real pain, and many commenters sympathised with @goofyfeline.
“It’s not even just the old ppl. I once had an inconsiderate couple seated behind me who kept tapping on my shoulder to tell me to not recline my seat whenever I tried to cause they wanted to use the table to watch their iPad,” one wrote.
“I had an old lady bang her fists and shake my seat once when I reclined it on a red eye,” added another.
“These old men need scolding,” a third chimed in. /TISG