If you do a little googling you can learn her name, what she does for a living (it seems she’s inbetween jobs at the moment), and where she went to school. She interned for a Congressman so she might have (had) political aspirations.
The company she interned for, BNP, issued a statement saying she wasn’t affiliated with them anymore.
I suppose at some point in the distant future these things won’t come replete with witch hunt type tactics and it will blow over, but I think she will probably need to make some kind of atonement if she expects to have a possible career in public life or for a high-profile company in the future.
According to the guy who filmed the encounter, the conductor came on the loudspeaker and reminded people to keep conversations quiet, “especially those people who went to Harvard or Yale or are from Westport.”
I am pretty sure we all have moments like that, hopefully very rarely, it is part of being human and something we struggle with. The incident alone will probably haunt her for some time, going over it in her mind. It is unfortunate as I see it that it was broadcast which amplifies it beyond what it should be.
She’s of Indian descent, probably Desi. I know most people think SE Asian or China/Japan/Koreas when we say Asian in the U.S., but she’s definitely Asian.
The racial subtext has to do with the comments that people have written about the incident and the woman. I know comments below stories are where internet trolls live, but people are quick to note her ethnicity, comments about Indians and caste systems (where aside from her name, there’s no evidence that she has spent any time in India), and the schadenfreude displayed because some stuck-up high achieving Indian woman had a meltdown.
I think the conductor handled it extremely well. But don’t touch her.
If you are addressing people in Britain, then it makes sense to use the term “Asian.” if you want to be understood by Americans, “South Asian” is much clearer.
She deserves every bit for continuing the boorish display. She could have stopped when the conductor came out but instead she got even more belligerent. Also, regardless of what schools she went to she didn’t bother to learn manners.
One of the blog posts I read suggested that this woman had “had a bad day, and had a few drinks,” so it’s entirely possible she was a little bit under the influence. Her behaviour is fairly consistent with the kind of behaviour exhibited when someone has had a couple of drinks.
I wish we could see more of the lead-up. I have to say, despite her behaviour in the clip, she really doesn’t seem like someone who would have been having a loud, obscene conversation on her phone, she just doesn’t. (Not because of her race or education, she just simply doesn’t strike me as the type.) Yet others familiar with that transit say you have to be really obnoxious to be tattled on, so obviously there was something going on.
I just can’t shake the feeling that there was maybe some other altercation between her and another passenger that led to her phone call being blown out of proportion (maybe she was even on the phone complaining to a friend about some jerk on the train) and by the time the conductor got involved the star of the clip was already aggravated.
And I still disagree that the conductor handled it all that well. Who knows how she acted before the supervisor got there? What we see in the clip reminds me so much of when my sister and I were small… She would be a real jerk to me, and by the time I got upset and my parents were on the scene, she would suddenly have that oh-so-professional and pious tone and recount a highly revised version of the events, and any attempts I made to correct the story were ignored, causing me to get more upset and her to seem all the more reasonable by contrast. Yes, I know I am purely speculating based on nothing and I’m sure someone will assume I have unresolved sibling rivalry issues, but I just feel like there’s more to the whole thing and that based on what we do see, we have no reason to call the upset passenger a horrible person, and that it is condescending and rude to discuss someone in front of them without letting them speak no matter how calmly and professionally you do it.
I really don’t see any other way of handling the situation. When your supervisor shows up, you report to him or her based on your point of view. That pretty much requires you to speak in the third person about the other person standing there.
I don’t see people in this situation going into a huddle – in fact, that’s more suspicious because by having a private convo, you’re not giving the customer the chance to hear what you’re saying and give the impression that you’re trying to put your thumb on the scales.
What happens is that the customer should let the conductor finish describing the situation and then start disputing the conductor’s account.
In any case, as I said before, I suspect this passenger was under the influence and that’s probably why her reactions were so out of proportion.
Eh, I disagree. I think the passenger was not a saint, for sure, but she seems merely frustrated to me, and attempting to be reasonable and it just surprises me to hear her called irate and belligerant, never mind horrible or the world’s worst person. And I don’t find the conductor to be a saint either, I think she was on a bit of a high horse. Honestly, the person in the video who bugged me more was the conductor. I’m obviously the only person to feel this way, and it actually makes me feel sad that my perspective seems so off and that I’m doing such a poor job explaining why I feel the way I do, so I think I’d better throw in the towel.
Even if we remove the racist and sexist overtones (yep, I noticed that there is a profligate use of the term “bitch” and “cunt” used to describe her), I think it has to do with the fact that:
a) as people have noted, to capture the attention of the conductors on this particular train, your behavior - noise level, cursing - has to be pretty egregious;
b) most of us feel that normal behavior, when asked to reduce your noise level in a public place, is to simply say “Sorry!” and shut up, whether you feel you were loud or not - most people likely realize that you’re often louder than you think you are on a cell phone as compared to others;
c) there’s nothing to be gained by arguing with a harried employee just doing their job when you can just as easily pipe down and make everyone’s trip more pleasant;
d) the incredible sense of entitlement to think that being educated somehow inoculates one from being boorish or ill-behaved, or that anyone cares that you went to School X when the entire issue is based on you just being loud.
e) ultimately, the requests for this woman to quiet down and allow others to have a peaceful trip were ignored, both when she was on the phone, and when she was confronted by the conductor.
I think most mature adults can modulate their speech so it doesn’t disturb anyone else. But if you can’t, and someone asks you to, the socially acceptable thing to do is to shut up. Not go on about your education, demand to be let off the train, and demand a refund. I’ll grant you that she seems fairly articulate, well dressed, and the like, but would you feel the same way if she was inarticulate and shabbily dressed?
And if, like some of the blog postings claim, she was either tipsy or drunk, I can only imagine how annoyingly loud and inappropriate she might have been before the conductor showed up. Being a few sheets to the wind certainly explains what happened but it doesn’t excuse it.
Based on what I’m reading here I disagree with saying she was attempting to be reasonable.
It’s not a court of law. She wasn’t being arrested or fined or anything. She was told to be quiet. What can possibly be gained by defending yourself? You get to talk louder? No. There is no benefit.
The reasonable thing to do is say ‘No problem’ and get on with your life. If you were loud then you know you were wrong and if you weren’t then you just get on with your life as usual. I understand it’s human nature to want to cross examine witnesses and demand evidence of your guilt but in a case like this, it doesn’t matter and simple decorum says laugh it off. I have been in similar situations and have followed my own advice.
Now, that being said, I don’t think she’s necessarily a bad person just a rude one and doesn’t deserve lasting effects but a mild shaming is not out of order if for nothing else, an example to other rude people.
What I’m saying is folks, pick your battles. You aren’t going to win them all and so many of them don’t really matter.
I’d say it actually does excuse this. I mean, her judgment is impaired so any stupid statements she makes don’t necessarily reflect on what she thinks when sober.
Now, there is no excuse for being that drunk in public and that’s where the real problem would be.
When I was in India, I frequently heard people using the term educated as a synonym for ‘well-mannered’, and this was understood as a different sense of the word from ‘being schooled’. But this was the first time I’ve ever heard anyone tracing the meaning back from their schooling to their manners.
While I’ve agreed with everything you’ve posted in the thread, I disagree on this point. In vino veritas, as they say. I’ve been drunk and said some stupid things, but they are pretty much what I think and believe… when I’m sober I have the good sense to not express those thoughts out loud.
I get what you’re saying but I’m not so sure. I certainly have said things I don’t really believe but I believe that the listener will react to when I’m drunk. I could believe that she doesn’t believe for a minute that her education means jack squat but that she believed that it would to her opponents and as we’ve seen in regards to the latter, she was correct.
Drunk or not drunk, she was an ass. And she had to have seen the person across the aisle filming her. If she didn’t, she must have really been drunk. The intelligent move would have been to just STFU instead of escalating the situation.
The conductor had me cracking up towards the end. “Do not touch me, that’s all I’m all saying.”
Commuter trains are strange places. When I would take the NJTransit train from school every day, I would see some crazy things. One thing that happened on a daily occurence was seeing businessmen drinking beer openly, without even a paper bag. I imagine none of them were really blasted, but some of those guys had long journeys. I’m betting they would throw back more than one beer before their stop. They got away with it because why the hell not? They’re white guys in business suits! And then there was the guy who vomited purple stuff all over the place and it streamed down the aisle in the most disgusting way.
I’ve seen the “I’m so educated!” tirade before. It’s hilarious. One time a couple couldn’t figure out how to unlock the shopping cart at Joanns fabrics (my local store has a coin-op system. The carts are locked and you have to insert a quarter into the lock to free the cart-you get your quarter back at the end) This couple couldn’t figure it out and were getting frustrated, the one cashier was trying to explain how it worked while ringing up customers. The couple did not get it. She said very nicely “If you wait one moment I’ll have someone come help you.” The man bellowed “WE WENT TO COLLEGE YOU KNOW!”
