A mum-to-be learned this the hard way recently, when she was forced to stand during a train journey after a man ‘refused’ to give up the seat she had booked for herself.
Mhari-Claire Doolan, from Stockport, had booked a seat on the train between Birmingham and Manchester for last week. However, when she approached her seat, she found a business man in his thirties sitting in it.
You would think that the man would have apologised and immediately vacated the seat once approached by Mhari-Claire, wouldn’t you? Well, you would be wrong!
The 29-year-old mum-to-be was left horrified when the man refused to give up the seat he had taken from her and “laughed in her face” when she showed him her ticket.
Sharing her story with the Manchester Evening News, Mhari-Claire said: “I was already tired and in pain and, to be honest, I’m so heavily pregnant I should probably not be travelling by train…I told him I had that seat booked and positioned myself so that he could see I was pregnant, but he just ignored me.”
What is worse, no one around her came to her aid: “No one did anything to help or intervene and no one offered me their seat. People just averted their eyes and pretended they hadn’t seen it.”
While a seat eventually came free for her, Mhari-Claire was forced to endure over half an hour of standing while in “unbearable” pain.
What a disgraceful story. There is a lesson to be learned for everyone who didn’t help out this poor woman.
