As soon as you hear about this, you can probably picture the scene: a woman sitting comfortably in her assigned seat, just starting to settle in for the flight.
Then, along comes a frazzled mom looking for help, asking if she would be willing to switch seats so she can sit next to her child.
In this case, though, the mom and her son weren’t seated together for some reason, so she asked the woman to change seats to make it work.
But what if the child in question wasn’t a toddler or young kid at all?
In her TikTok video, Surya Garg, the passenger, asked viewers to weigh in with their opinions.
She explained that she’d generally be okay with giving up her seat if a family with young children approached her.
However, Surya then added more details about the situation: “Tonight, I not only got asked to give up my window seat, so that I could sit in a middle seat, but the quote-unquote family that asked me to do this was a mother and her son – her son had to be a minimum of like 16 or 17 years old.”
“This mans was 6’4″, talking on the phone to his girlfriend the entire time we were boarding.”
Since Surya was already seated, she decided to politely refuse the mom’s request, explaining that she had paid extra for the seat she was in.
Apparently, the mom didn’t take this response well, as Surya described: “This woman makes the nastiest face at me I’ve ever experienced, sits down next to me in the middle seat [and] her son goes back to the middle seat he was assigned to.”
According to Surya, the mom then spent the entire flight “muttering profanities” at her, making the situation even more uncomfortable.
Many people quickly jumped into the comments to give their thoughts, with a lot of them agreeing with Surya’s decision.
One viewer shared their support, writing: “You are not wrong! And I’m a mom but of littles. We always plan and pay the extra to sit together however…”
However, some people sympathized with the mom in this situation, with one commenter saying they would give up their seat “100% of the time.”
“As a parent we only have a solid 18 years before they go out on there [sic] own […],” they added.
Surya’s video has now gained over 1.5 million views, continuing to stir up plenty of conversation.
