Train row after elderly couple refuse to move from mother-of-three’s reserved seats

‘I would always give up a seat, reserved or not, for someone who needed it more,’ mother says

A mother has criticised an elderly couple for taking her reserved train seats that were meant for her three children.

Amanda Mancino-Williams took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to share her experience riding a full train from Cheltenham to Nottingham. The seats were sectioned into groups of four, with two seats sitting in between a table. She reserved one group of four seats for herself and her children, but arrived to see an elderly couple sitting in two of them.

In the resurfaced thread, which was initally shared in 2019, she claimed the couple refused to move because her reserved tickets “don’t matter”.

“If a mum with three kids and bags has four reserved seats for a long train journey, and you’re sitting in their seats on a full carriage, don’t tell them that their tickets don’t matter in a posh voice and then say you’re not moving and refuse to make eye contact. Don’t be these people,” the first post read.

Mancino-Williams then showed her three children crammed into two seats in a following post, as she wrote: “My 12yo is just staring this woman down.”

She continued the thread by saying that a man had offered her his seat. She later spoke to the train conductor, who apologised and offered them all seats in first class. The mother went on to express how upset she was to not get the seats she purchased. “I would always give up a seat, reserved or not, for someone who needed it more,” she wrote in the thread. “But for her to tell me that my tickets meant nothing and then refuse to acknowledge me? Do people just expect you to slink away?”

She continued: “My kids just told me that while they were sitting across from the couple the woman said to her husband, loud enough so the kids would hear, that ‘even when we take first class people don’t give up their seats, you take what’s there.’ In case you felt sorry for them.”

Soon after the incident, Mancino-Williams took to X again to respond to commenters telling her that her children should have stood up to the couple. “This situation is not about my children not having manners enough to stand for the elderly. This is about a culture of bullying and entitlement,” she wrote. “My kids and I were being fair and following rules and these two were not. They immediately switched into bully mode as they saw us approach, clearly aware that those seats were ours.”

The mother continued: “Given how easy it was for the conductor to move us to another carriage to diffuse the situation, had they been in real need, I’m sure they would have gotten moved as well. Instead they broke the rules and tried to make my children and I feel powerless. I don’t have time for that.”

After sharing her experience, many people took to the comments to defend the mother. “They were just being entitled planks that felt they could just push their way. You and your children were totally in the right,” one commenter wrote.

Another agreed, writing: “The conductor should have moved them, your seats were reserved therefore they were your seats full stop! What’s the point of reserving seats if they are not going to be upheld? I hope you got first class treatment. The way they have behaved is disgusting what nasty people they are.”