On this week's Live and Let's Fly, we talked about the practice of changing airplane seats, and I want to focus on one aspect of it: shame. Is it appropriate to shame someone for not changing seats? Vogue Williams went on a rant when a man refused to swap seats for her.
Williams boarded a flight from Gibraltar to London with her family and realized she had booked the wrong seat. I don't know how that happens, but I think the mistake was innocent. Williams sat with the infant and her two older children in a row. Her husband sat in the window seat across the aisle instead of sitting in the aisle seat. He asked if the man in the aisle would like to switch with his wife. The passenger asked if he would like.
What happened on Spencer and Vogue was recounted by Williams.
“The guy was sitting in the aisle seat and Spencer was like, ‘Would you mind doing window instead of aisle so we can be all together?’
“And he was like ‘Yes Spencer, I would mind.’”
“We were just like, ‘Oh, okay dude, that’s okay,’ and so anyway when he realized he was being an absolute t**t, he looked at me with a newborn baby and the two kids beside me, he was like ‘Okay, fine, fine I’ll do it.’
“Then literally the air hostess came down and I asked her ‘Would you have another aisle seat for this f**king particular piece of sh*t over here?’”
Williams caused a backlash over her sense of entitlement. The children were sitting with her. This is not the same as a child having to sit alone or a family completely separated.
The language used to describe him is offensive. I think he chose the aisle seat because he likes to get up to stretch.
He was shamed into moving because of the anger of Williams.
Williams backpedaled her story.
“Enough of this. I would never expect or demand that anyone swaps a seat with me. It was a joke that definitely didn’t land.”
It was clear what she was talking about.
For our purposes, I will state again that I am generally open to moving seats if asked nicely and the new seat is not inferior, but there is no way I would even consider moving if the passenger cursed me out or initially refused.
Everyone deserves to be treated with respect.
Shame is a powerful tool when it comes to moving seats on planes. I don't agree with the way Willaims and her husband handled the issue on their flight to London, but I do agree with the fact that shame can lead to action.
What would you have done?
oguewilliams is on IG
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