‘Entitled’: Woman slammed for asking man in wheelchair to move on bus

A woman has been slammed for expecting a man in a wheelchair to move for her on a bus, with people calling her behaviour “insensitive and ableist”.

A woman has been shamed after she admitted she had asked a wheelchair user on a bus to move, so that she and her daughter could sit together.

The 32-year-old mum took to Reddit’s popular AITA forum to ask if she was in the wrong over her actions.

She wrote that she and her five-year-old daughter boarded a bus “at a busy stop”, Fox News reports.

The woman, who did not share her location, said that once they were on the bus, she saw that “there were no empty seats available, except for one near a person using a wheelchair” – who she described as a man aged about 40.

“I asked the person if [he] could move [his] wheelchair to another spot so that my daughter and I could sit together, but the person declined,” she wrote.

The man in the wheelchair, she went on, said he needed the space for his “mobility device”.

“I was taken aback and frustrated by his response,” she wrote.

She told the man that her daughter “was very young and needed to sit next to me for safety reasons” – yet the person still “refused to move”.

The woman was slammed online after saying she asked a wheelchair-user to move for her on a bus.

“I ended up having to stand for the entire ride with my daughter in tow, which was uncomfortable and tiring for both of us,” she said.

But the mum then said that when she told a friend about the incident, her friend told her she was “being insensitive and ableist”.

Her friend told her “that the person in the wheelchair had a right to the space” he needed – and “that it was unfair” of her to ask the man in the wheelchair to move.

People were quick to point out the woman could have stood while her daughter sat on the one free seat. Picture: iStock

“Now, I’m questioning whether or not I was wrong for asking the person to move,” the mother continued.

To date, the woman’s post has received 2500 comments, and been voted on nearly 4000 times. And the vast majority of commenters agree that she was completely in the wrong.

“Imagine being so entitled that you genuinely think standing up on your perfectly good, working legs is so awful and tiring that you ask someone who is physically unable to stand to get out of your way,” one person wrote.

“So the child sits and you stand. Simple,” another said.

“The five-year-old could have just stood. Seriously, when did five-year-olds become so fragile that they can’t stand for a bus trip. Parenting like this damages children. They are being taught that they are pathetic,” someone else wrote.

Many pointed out how lucky the mum and daughter were that they could stand – unlike the man in the wheelchair.

Another person defended the mum’s insistence that her daughter be able to sit down for the bus ride.

“It’s about safety. Children can easily fall in buses because they can’t reach the places to hold onto, since those are made for adults,” they wrote.

But others who “used to take the bus a lot” declared that “mothers with kids are the most entitled bus users [that] exist”.

“One can only hope [the woman] comes to realise how lucky she is she can even stand and walk without any trouble at all, and that the next time there are no seats on the bus, she would just suck it up for a few minutes of the ride,” one wrote.

“Your kid can sit on your lap or you can ask someone else to move,” said another.

“Just because you have a child doesn’t automatically give you priority over others. If the bus is too crowded, take a cab. Otherwise, you’re gong to have to deal with the downside of public transportation,” someone else wrote.

This article originally appeared on Fox News and was reproduced with permission