The thing about etiquette sites is that once we have to appeal to that authority, we have already failed.
Etiquette rules are there for those that don’t know how to naturally interact with others.
If the latecomers had been better at social interactions, they would have conceded that the movie is in progress, and the nicest thing to do is to find a seat without disturbing anyone.
If mademoiselle had been better at social interactions, she would have just moved.
The fact that most people can handle the situation without a fuss is why society doesn’t collapse and we just regress to barbarians roaming the street.
The fact that there are some people who just can’t handle the situation without a fuss is the only reason we need miss manners in the first place. Or like Quasi said, a damn row captain.
The contest isn’t to have miss manners agree with your side. The contest is to avoid having to ever bring it to miss manners in the first place.
I really am shocked by your lack of empathy Shayna.
Obviously I am not germ phobic. But I deal with lots of people who are and who have all sorts of irrational fears about germs in public spaces. Especially this time of year. And I can understand someone not wanting to have to explain their germ phobia and point at another person to a stranger in a public venue.
To me having some empathy is the first kernel of manners. I can understand her phobia even if I do not share it. I certainly would be among those in the row and behind the row upset over a shuffling going on while the movie was in progress with colse to the front 20% of the theater wide open, just so a couple who was delayed (for heroic reasons I am sure) can sit together in the best possible seats. Unlike you I have come in late, maybe not for so heroic of reasons. And I sit in the seats that are open disturbing others who are already there watching the movie as little as I possibly can. I cannot understand how anyone would consider doing otherwise.
Sure. It’s makes those people a little disruptive.
But the seat shift takes literally 10 seconds, that’s it.
You could miss more of the movie by looking down to see how much popcorn you have left.
That isn’t the OP’s position. She said she would have moved if the lights were up.
Regarding perception of seat quality:
If she has a perception that is not matched by most people, then most people would consider it rude, unless she makes a sincere effort to acknowledge that her response is outside the norm and the reason why.
If she has a perception that most people understand, like shifting would put her behind a person that made it difficult to see, then most people would not consider it rude if she followed the proper courtesy, for example “Normally I would move but that person is too tall for me to see the movie” (it conveys an understanding that the courteous thing to do is move, and it provides information about the denial so the requester understands it wasn’t an arbitrary or inconsiderate decision).
The assumption on both sides of this courtesy transaction is that adjacent seats are so interchangeable in quality that there would need to be a good reason not to accommodate the request.
My germophobe friend who won’t eat at anyone else’s house but her own … and mine, because I accommodate her phobia … would beg to differ that I have no empathy for germophobes.
I simply don’t believe her.
That was just a convenient excuse to attempt to mitigate her real reason for not wanting to move, which was the other party’s tardiness.
Why do I think that?
Because she wrote it as an afterword with an asterisk, not even within the main part of the story, which focused entirely on them being rude because they were late.
It wasn’t unavailable, you just wouldn’t let them use it because they had the audacity to be late.
It also wouldn’t have come to that had you, in spite of their rudeness in arriving late, elected not to up the ante by displaying your own rudeness in return and had just had your ESS OH switch seats real quick.
You seem wound up yourself. Or perhaps one of those people who loves to comment on “butthurt”. If you can’t be bothered, could care less, well, you can click that little x at the corner of the window…
There is obviously no way to not make you dubious. I could have a video up here of the entire incident, a photograph of the seating situation, and a the bloodwork of the sick girl posted up, and I am sure some people would still be calling me a liar. Because, that’s just what they do. :rolleyes:
I think this is one of the problems you are having. Like Nzinga, Seated said, it was rude for those latecomers to disturb you like that, but declining was also a little rude. It is like chess. You don’t think about the past. You don’t think, “They disturbed me.” You think, “What should I do now? Okay, I’ll just move over for them.”
So basically here is a timeline of what happened:
Latecomers ask mademoiselle to optimize row usage so they can sit next to each other. Rudeness level: Low
I suspect the opposite, actually. You’d be getting far less sympathy from many of the people in here had you left out your afterword.
See, the thing is, I understand you not wanting to sit next to a person who’s coughing all over you. I wouldn’t want to, either. But you had other options than you being the one beside her. For instance, as penalty for their lateness and their rudeness, you could have sat them next to her and had the last laugh. But instead of choosing to be nice to people even if they were rude to have asked in the first place, you chose instead to escalate it.
Why? Why were you that stubborn? You were so stubborn that you actually ruined the whole experience for yourself. So much so that you just had to come pitch a fit about a 10-second verbal spat that should have just been forgotten about by the time the credits rolled.
AU, if you are ever on a date in the future, and some one starts cussing out your date, a “leave her/him alone” or “Get out of here, now”, is not highly rude. It’s standing up to people who are…cussing out your date.
And texting is extremely rude. Not just to me, but to the entire theater.
See, this is a pretty hysterical response. I’ve simply come late to a thread and offered my opinion. I wouldn’t behave like you, and I wouldn’t behave like your characterization of the other people either. Refusing to move wouldn’t represent a big victory for me, and would not do anything to change my self esteem or sense of who I am as a person. I wouldn’t feel mown down, even if I were accommodating a rude request or turning away from a rude refusal.
There were two people and two available seats — they were just separated by you and you refused to move a centimeter so they could sit at the height they wanted … because they were late.
