Airline passenger in tears after seatmate refused to switch so she could be near husband: ‘Ultimate white tears’
No tears for the mildly inconvenienced.
Travel blogger Tomiko Harvey went viral after sharing her recent turbulent flight experience, where a fellow passenger asked if she would give up her aisle seat so she could sit next to her husband on a ten-hour flight — and cried for three hours when Harvey said “no.”
In an emotional display that Harvey called “the ultimate white tears,” Harvey claimed that the distraught traveler said that she missed her husband — who the blogger clarified was “two rows up in a middle seat with his headphones on, sleeping in heavenly peace the entire flight.”
Harvey, who’d been on the connecting flight from Istanbul to Washington, D.C. after visiting Kazakhstan due to her father passing away, shared that she asked the wailing woman, who wanted her to take the less desirable middle seat, if someone in her own family had died.
“I finally asked her if someone died, because who cries for [three] hours?” Harvey wrote on Instagram under video footage she took on the flight, having blurred out the offending passenger’s face. “She said nobody died. She just missed her husband and whose shoulder would she lay her head on.”
Harvey, in turn, gave her the cold shoulder — and added in a “good job” for good measure when they finally landed, congratulating her for “surviving without your husband for 10 hours.”
Harvey joked that the situation prompted her to reevaluate her own marriage, quipping that she “clearly [does] not love her husband enough.”
She also asked her followers if they agreed with her in-flight frustration at the social snafu.
“What is wrong with people that they feel they can ask a stranger to switch seats, especially on a long haul flight?” Harvey asked.
“Is it rude to refuse to switch seats on a plane? If you want to sit together, book together or pay for seat selection.”
Commenters on the post, which was set to trending saxophones-getting-louder audio and has since racked up over 90,000 likes, similarly scoffed at the crying woman’s petty plight — and stuck in Harvey’s corner.
“Cried for [three hours] and you didn’t have the flight attendant move her? You’re nicer than me,” one unsympathetic commenter quipped.
“Can’t survive a ten hour flight without her husband but also won’t pay for seat together,” added another. “None of those sound like your problem.”
Others joked that the woman’s happily snoozing husband was likely grateful for the break from his spoiled spouse.
“Plot twist…hubby booked the flights and seat selection,” theorized one commenter. “That [man] needed a break!”
“He chose peace,” said a fellow skeptic. “Said let somebody else be drained for 10 hours.”
While a scattered few commenters chided Harvey for not being nicer to her seat mate — one asked “Why be so mean if they asked nicely” — the majority praised the blogger for sticking her ground.
“For a middle seat!!!!!” one fired up commenter said. “Nope sorry not doing it!”
