Rude dude on the train

I made my way by train to another city to meet my best friend for a movie date, but on the way there I encountered an unpleasant situation. One that I usually do my best to keep silent on (because of social anxiety). This time I decided to speak up for myself and those around me. I hope this inspires you to do the same if you run into something or someone like this.

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Transcript

This week, I made my way by train to another city to meet my best friend for a movie night. She lives about 3 hours away from me and we’ve been meeting up halfway for girl days once a quarter just to catch up.

FYI we went to see Dune 2 and I highly absolutely recommend it. We had relax seats so we lounged with our feet up for 3 hours. It was fantastic.

But on the way there, I encountered an unpleasant situation. One that I usually do my best to keep silent on, but since I’ve been attacked by trolls and bots online in the past few months and have had to resort to defending myself and my views, I’ve been kind of desensitized to confrontation.

Not that I seek it by any means, but it doesn’t crush me as it once did. I feel more confident in the shakiness of my voice because trust me, that will always be there. The shaking I mean.

Here’s what happened. I boarded the train with my kindle in tow, and I was excited at the prospect of catching up on my reading since all I’ve been doing lately is creating content and scrolling for it. With that being said, I decided to sit in the Silent Cabin. Usually there’s a big shh symbol on the window and on the cabin door itself to let you know that you’re sitting in a quiet zone. No talking, no music, no nothing. Just peace.

Lo and behold, someone decides to be anything BUT quiet. At first he started by playing some crap music on his phone. Now it wasn’t too loud but still, my annoyance radar went off. And when I pick up on someone blatantly being anti-social, I get annoyed fast, because not only is it rude but it shows a huge lack of social awareness.

When I tell you it was quiet, it was quiet. I felt bad just opening my backpack and making a noise while this dude was just happily listening to his music. I let it go.

Then a bit later he starts having a conversation with the person in front of him. I guess they were together. I let that pass too. I was reading and told myself to not make a fuss about it because I’ve read in busy and noisy places before so no biggie.

See, at that point, I was already rationalizing with myself as to why I shouldn’t say anything. I’m not gonna bother the guy, I’ll just suffer instead. But I’m not suffering so stop being so whiny about it! Those were the thoughts I had.

Then came my breaking point. He picked up his phone and started talking to someone. Loud. And it wasn’t like a quick emergency call or something. No, it was a full-blown catching-up conversation. My blood was starting to boil. At that point, I felt like we had all given him enough grace and patience that he was just taking advantage of the cabin’s silence. But like, how do you talk so loud while there are 15 other people in the room with you being dead silent? How do you not register that?

But I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I thought, well maybe he doesn’t know he’s in a silent cabin, so I got up and went to him. I said “Hi excuse me, this is the silent cabin” and he looked around and said, “Where does it say that?” I think he was just pretending by the way he reacted, but I was kind and showed him the sign right on his window. The word SILENT in big was plastered on his window.

“He was like ah ok” and I walked away. He was face-timing mind you. Face-timing! 5 minutes later, he was still going at it. And I told myself “Don’t do it, don’t get up, let it be” but I’ve been so exhausted of letting undeserving people take up space and feel superior to everyone else that I decided enough is enough.

Why are there 15 people in a cabin who are simply accepting 1 asshole? Why are we the ones making space for him? Why are we the ones to suffer while he gets to happily walk all over us? It just didn’t make sense to me that we’re all choosing to not say something when he has no regard for the people around him. 

How is it that we’ve been conditioned to be kind and accepting of those who choose to be rude and unaccepting of others? And it’s not just in these situations but allowing those with platforms to spew hate, and misinformation, and create division, at our expense.

So I got up a second time. I was shaking, yes. I didn’t care. I told him he was being very rude and to go take his conversation somewhere else. All he did was wave me off and say “Go, go, one more minute.”

And while I knew it would have resulted in him being more rude because it should have been enough for someone to tell him off the first time around. The normal reaction would have been for him to get off his phone and be quiet, or leave, instead of me having to say something again.

And that’s when I realized that I was done suffering for people who have no regard for my experience as a human. And you shouldn’t either. It’s time to break out of our comfort zone and confront those who have no shame in disrupting everyone around them and who are rude in return.

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve spoken up for myself, or someone else for that matter, but I’m going to make it a priority to be more vocal regardless of how much my voice or body shakes. And I encourage you to do the same because we’re worthy of the space just as much as anyone else.

Thank you for listening to the You’re worth knowing podcast, see you next week!