I’ll just plonk myself down on an offender’s lap - good icebreaker, and strangers appreciate, and are even grateful for, my winning, charismatic attention.
Or you could just ask for what you’re entitled to without bothering with all the faffing around.
Of course, that doesn’t make for such an exciting story, and some might consider the lack of an opportunity to humiliate someone who pissed them off as a disadvantage.
This. I had the same reaction as some others when reading the OP : why not just asking for the seat?
Besides, when I’m reading for instance, I tend to be oblivious to the rest of the world, so I wouldn’t assume that someone reading a paper, as in the example given by someone, would necessarily just pretend not to notice. And of course, even though unlikely, there’s the possibility that the seemingly valid person is actually entitled to the seat, as pointed out by someone.
My wife had to take the train in japan during all of her pregnancies and the only people to ever move from priority seat were middle age women. Probably they had the experience of being pregnant themselves.
Sitting in those seats when you aren’t disabled, elderly, pregnant, etc. is really rude.
I’ve never been to Japan but in Chicago I often use the seats late at night. The closer to the bus driver or train operator, the better. I will, of course, give mine up if necessary.
I don’t think it’s rude to use the seats if nobody else is using them, particularly when the bus or train is packed. On Chicago buses, the handicapped seats are the entire front part of the bus! But have some common sense, folks. The few times I had to take the train on crutches, I literally had people race me for the last seat when the doors opened. And I can damn well tell when someone glances up from a newspaper and then looks back down to wait and see whether someone else would give up a seat first.
Tokyo trains are notoriously crowded. There rarely to never are open seats during commuting hours.
It’s not rude to you then if you are constantly watching to see who needs them, but that also rarely happens.
The other problem is that for pregnant women early pregnancy is one of the more difficult times so it’s hard to tell who is pregnant or not.
In Japan they have a badge which doctors give out to pregnant women, but people who are rude enough to occupy those seats don’t care about that.
Don’t get people started on never using a handicap stall in a public restroom. :eek:
Well, just try to argue your way out of a ticket for parking in a handicapped spot because “there weren’t any disabled people around!”
Not the same thing. A parking spot is a parking spot, at best, it’s situated closer to the door. It’s pretty much intended to allow handicapped people to find a spot quicker (some are larger, but not all). Otherwise they could use a regular spot. By occupying the spot, you defeat its purpose.
A handicapped toilet, on the other hand, is different from regular toilets and intended for people who have difficulties, or simply can’t, use regular toilets. The issue isn’t much whether or not they’ll wait less, but whether or not they’ll be able to use the toilets at all. Even if everybody else use them too, they still serve their purpose.
On top of it, they’re typically build in numbers vastly, vastly exceeding the needs. In an office building, for instance, you might have, say, three toilets stalls at each floor for each gender, one of the three being an handicapped toilet. And you won’t have 1/3 of the employees needing them, not even 1/10th. It’s in fact very likely that none of the employees working at this floor will need them. They still need to be there, but not using them if you aren’t handicapped makes little sense.