Air travel often leads to unusual human interactions, from polite small talk to dramatic seat disputes. A recent Reddit post by a traveler highlighted this dynamic, sharing an encounter with an uncooperative seatmate during a long flight.

He wrote:

I was on a flight to attend an annual convention happening on the other side of the country with two of my senior colleagues. The entire flight practically consisted of people in the same industry. My colleagues were busy greeting people as we were walking along the airplane aisle to get to our seats.

At any rate, a woman in early thirties was sitting in my seat. She was wearing oversized sunglasses along with a pair of studio headphones over her head. Moreover, she rested her hands neatly on her lap and had her head tilted back on the headrest as if to suggest that she was asleep and not to be disturbed. Give me a break, half of the plane hadn’t finished boarding by this point.

She ignored several of my initial verbal attempts at getting her attention. She ignored half a dozen gentle taps on her shoulder. When she finally “awakened”, I tried explaining to her that she was in my seat. But her response was to point at her headphones, then shrugging with both her hands upturned to gesture that she couldn’t hear what I was saying.