Is there anything more annoying than arriving at your designated seat and finding it's occupied? It's a problem train passengers know all too well.
When you're travelling on a busy service, it's not uncommon to find people struggling to find a place to sit. Or sometimes, passengers ignore their reservations - keen to pick a better seat.
One parent recently found themselves in an awkward situation after boarding a train ready for a two-hour journey, only to find strangers had taken the seats reserved for their family.
Explaining their conundrum in a post to Reddit, the parent claimed: "When we got to our booked and assigned table seats there were 3 Americans sitting there from a big tour group."
Unfortunately, the group were reluctant to move. "Their argument was that someone had taken their seats (and they wouldn't tell me which seats were originally theirs), but as I had a five-year-old and a nine-year-old with me and didn't want to be separated for two hours I refused to give up our designated seats and forced them to move," the parent continued.
Baby name expert shares rare vintage names she expects to make a comeback soonAs per the post, the family were then able to use the seats, but their fellow passengers weren't too happy about the arrangement.
"When we got off at the other end the girls gave me huge stink eye." Accordingly, the parent asked social media users: "Was I the a****e?"
But commenters reassured the parent they'd responded fairly. One person replied: "You wouldn't be wrong if you didn't have children. You wouldn't be wrong if you just wanted to sit there because you wanted to sit there.
"They were your assigned seats. You wanted to occupy them. You weren't wrong for making the people who decided to take them move."
Meanwhile, another wrote: "They were your seats. It's too bad if someone took theirs (IF they're even telling the truth about that) but that's for the conductors to fix, not you."