A few people replied to the effect that the main reason I find a lot of SPOTD award recipients is because I (a) am driving my car, and (b) go shopping late at night. Today, I took the public transport option, and caught a tram into the city to take care of some stuff. This allowed me to find my SPOTD winner and destroy the tentative theories that some of you were building.

I was leaving the city to go home after I’d finished my tasks, and there was a bit of a hold-up for the tram, meaning it was reasonably full when I boarded. I bought my ticket and went to find a seat. There were still enough seats scattered around the tram that it was possible to find a place to sit down, but there were a lot of people standing up in the aisle anyway.

I found a seat, and the tram continued to fill over the next few stops. There ended up being only one seat available when a mother and child got on to the tram. The child grabbed the seat quickly, while the mother struggled to remain upright on the moving vehicle with three bags of shopping. She was standing right next to me, and I was brought up to give my seat to women, the elderly, or the injured, if they were present and standing while I was seated. So I did the right thing, stood up, moved out of the road and offered her my seat.

That’s when I found my SPOTD.

The woman turned to face me, thanked me and then promptly turned back around, placed her bags of shopping on the seat, and remained standing, swaying all over the place. So there I was - I’d paid for a ticket to travel on the tram, I’d done the right thing and offered my seat to another person, and I was standing up and rolling from side to side, while bags of shopping rode on the seat…

The woman I had been sitting opposite from looked at the bags on the seat, then looked at me, and said in a loud voice trying to shame the mother “you could have stayed sitting down - she obviously doesn’t appreciate what you’ve done”. The mother turned around, glared at the seated woman, said something neither of us could hear, and faced the other way again.

A couple of stops later, the young man I’d been sitting next to got off, and the woman I’d offered the seat to began to move in, to get his seat, leaving her bags on the seat I had vacated for her. It was at that point I felt I could be only so obliging, and pushed in front of her to get the seat. She gave me a surprised “you are so rude” look, which I ignored. I’d given her my seat originally. I was not about to make the same mistake again.

A few stops later, she decided she did need to sit down, and rather than remove her shopping and sit down, simply perched on the remaining three square inches of seat that was available to her. Naturally, this put most of her body in the aisle, and since we were right next to the door, presented many problems for people getting on and off the tram. She remained seated that way until we reached her stop and she left the vehicle.

So there. Finding the SPOTD is not limited to driving my car, or shopping at night…

Categories: SPOTD