She got thrown under the bus.
A disabled bus passenger elicited sympathy online after reportedly not giving up her bus seat to an elderly “Karen” — who reportedly decided to sit on her instead. A Reddit thread detailing the alleged etiquette dilemma is currently blowing up online.
The unnamed Redditor explained that she suffers from “chronic illnesses and chronic back and hip pain” and therefore rarely takes the bus, instead opting to drive herself or have someone else drive her to mitigate the agony, the Mirror reported.
However, the transit rider said that against her better judgment, she decided to take the bus one day, and reportedly managed to land a seat.
It wasn’t long before an elderly lady approached her and turned her public transit foray into the bus ride from hell.
“At the next stop, some entitled Karen gets on the bus and stands next to me with a displeased look on her face,” the poster recalled. “The entitled woman said, ‘Excuse me?” I responded, ‘Hello, do you need something?.’ The entitled woman added, ‘You know that there are older people on the bus who need to sit? People like me!’”
The Redditor tried to explain her predicament but to no avail. “I said, ‘I’m sorry, there are probably other seats in the back. I really need that seat,'” the woman recounted. “She said, ‘Stop talking this nonsense, you are a healthy young girl who is clearly healthy. I need to ‘sit!’”
“I replied, ‘I might look healthy, but I’m not and young people can be ill too. So please leave me alone.’”
She said that by that point fellow commuters had started to stare at them because the woman was “huffing and puffing loudly.”
Unmoved by the woman’s plight, the senior citizen reportedly labeled her “spoiled” and started raving that “today’s youth need to learn to respect their elders.”
Things came to a head after the commuter decided to sit on the narrator, per the post.
The commentariat overwhelmingly sided with the poster with one writing, “That is why you named her an ‘entitled Karen.'” They explained that they had the same experience as someone who suffers from stage four ovarian cancer, writing, “Everyone looks at me and states the same thing — ‘You look so healthy what do you mean you have cancer…’ I am sorry to hear you are experiencing such negative energies.”
Others deemed the old lady’s behavior unacceptable regardless of whether the woman had a disability.
“Even if the original poster didn’t have pain and illness, she still had the right in the seat,” one commiserator declared. “Heck, if I were in that situation, where some lady [was] to sit on me, I’d immediately push them, screaming at the top of my lungs to get off me.”
They added, “If she made a fuss of ‘assault,’ you can point out she was sitting on top of you. The only way it’s okay for a human to sit on you is if it’s a young child you allow on your lap.”
This isn’t the first time someone has been raked over the coals for exhibiting poor etiquette aboard public transportation.
One Redditor sparked a raging debate after describing how she told a wheelchair-bound rider to move aside so she and her daughter could sit together.
“Imagine being so entitled that you genuinely think standing up on your perfectly good, working legs is so awful and tiring that you ask someone who is physically unable to stand to get out of your way,” criticized one.
Another fumed, “Seriously, when did 5-year-olds become so fragile that they can’t stand for a bus trip.”