AITA for not giving my empty row of plane seats to a mother with toddlers?
This happened a couple weeks ago, but I'm still conflicted about it, so here goes.
I travel a lot for work, mostly one route between the east and west coasts. Most recently, I was out on the west coast and had to push my flight back by a few hours, and ended up switching to a red eye that would get me home at around 5:30am. This wouldn't be a problem except that I had a client meeting at 8:30 that morning, so while switching my ticket I paid out of pocket to upgrade to a window seat in an exit row, because the whole row was empty and that way I had a decent shot of getting at least a little bit of sleep. (Because I take this specific route and airline a lot, I knew a few things about this particular row - namely that you can't recline the seats more than an inch or two and the window is usually kind of weird, which was fine by me since I just wanted to get on the plane and conk out.)
Of course, when it came time to board, I get to my row and find that a woman is sitting in the middle with her two young daughters, maybe 2 and 4, on either side of her. I politely told her that she'd made a mistake and was sitting in my seat. Her response was that she was seated a row up and across the aisle, on the aisle seat, but her two kids were across from her on the aisle and middle, and she saw the empty row before I got there, and would I do her the favor of just switching?
Here's the thing: if circumstances were different, I would have! But I explained that I had a meeting at 8:30 and paid extra for that ticket so that I could sleep. I really thought that would be the end of it, but she huffed and shook her head and buckled her kids' seatbelts RIGHT THEN AND THERE.
By this point the plane is filling up, I'm blocking the aisle, it's causing a whole thing, so I just flag down a flight attendant and explain the situation. The mom stops ignoring me long enough to pipe up and say she needs a row where the three of them can sit together. The flight attendant (who looked exhausted and totally done and clearly just wanted to get home as much as I did) goes, "This is an exit row. Your kids can't sit there because they're not capable of performing the exit row responsibilities in case of an emergency landing. There's not going to be another empty row. Please sit in the seat indicated on your ticket."
So I sit down in my window seat and she takes her kids and moves up a row, and I figure that's the last of it, but of course, no one else comes to sit down in my row (the gamble paid off), and so when we finally take off and hit cruising altitude, I push the arm rests up and stretch out across the row and just pass out. When we land, I'm getting my bag out of the overhead, and the woman stands up and mutters to me, "You look like you slept well, bitch."
So, Reddit. Am I the asshole (or bitch, as it were)?
EDITED TO ADD: Okay, thanks Reddit, I think most of you agree that I'm not the asshole here. But please do me a favor and don't refer to her kids as brats or assume they were ill-behaved. The kids were just fine. They watched something on their iPad and went to sleep as soon as we took off. Kids don't like flying more than anyone else, and it's not these girls' fault their mom acted like a jerk.
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