I refused to switch seats with a mom’s teen son — she cursed me the whole flight
The subject of switching seats is a never-ending debate — but how old is too old to switch seats to be near your parents?
Passenger Surya Garg claims she was asked to swap her window seat by a woman who was in the middle seat next to her and wanted her son to have Garg’s seat.
“I’m like, ‘Who’s your son?’” the New Yorker — who didn’t name the airline — recalled in a TikTok video. “And she points to this, like, 6-foot-5 man!”
Garg noted that her son was “a minimum of 16 or 17 years old” and looked like an adult.
She further claimed that while everyone was preparing to get on the plane, he was “talking on the phone to his girlfriend the entire time we were boarding.”
“This was not, like, her ‘child,’” Garg continued. “This was, like, her kid but, like, he’s an adult.”
Admitting she “didn’t know what to do” — and she was already settled in her seat and didn’t want to move to the son’s spot, which was a middle seat a few rows back — Garg chalked the seating arrangements up to “bad planning” and didn’t move.
“I don’t want to look like an a-hole, but I don’t think I’m an a-hole in this situation,” she said in the 2½-minute clip which has nabbed more than 439,000 views.
“I said, ‘Look, I’m sorry, no. I paid extra for this seat,” she explained — which reportedly didn’t go over well with the mom.
Garg claims that when she didn’t switch, the woman immediately turned nasty — and muttered profanities under her breath for the duration of the flight.
“This woman makes the nastiest face at me I’ve ever experienced, sits down next to me in the middle seat that, like, she was assigned to. Her son goes back to the middle seat that he’s assigned to in the back, and then — I kid you not — under her breath for, like, the entirety of the flight, is just, like, muttering profanities at me,” Garg recalled in disbelief.
Followers were solidly on her side and overwhelmingly assured Garg that she didn’t do the wrong thing — and she shouldn’t have been asked to move for a near-grown man in the first place.
“As a mom who travels with kids, I don’t know how people don’t plan for this and buy the seats together. I don’t get it! You did nothing wrong!” one woman assured her.
“You are never in the wrong for sitting in the seat you paid for,” agreed another.
Other commenters even jokingly suggested that someone else could benefit from the non-switcheroo.
“I used to get so excited when I was teen and got separated from my family while flying lol,” one commenter said.
“That kid was def thrilled u said no and he didnt have to sit next to her,” chimed in one person, while another added, “You are not wrong whatsoever, and I worry for her son in every way.”
South African reserve with endangered species lists for $36M
Take it easy after the big day with a slow safari honeymoon
Traveler misses $1,300 vacation due to obscure passport rule
About The Author
