Ah, Reddit. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s an American social news aggregator, web content rating, and discussion website. Registered members submit content to the site, such as links, text posts, and images, which other members then voted up or down.
Reddit has an area called AITA, which stands for “Am I The A-Hole.” They describe the community as, “A catharsis for the frustrated moral philosopher in all of us, and a place to finally find out if you were wrong in an argument that’s been bothering you. Tell us about any non-violent conflict you have experienced; give us both sides of the story, and find out if you’re right, or you’re the a-hole.” It’s sort of like a jury of their peers kind of thing.
We mentioned another “AITA” story on Reddit a few months ago – a guy had planned a family trip overseas but wound up leaving his daughter home because her passport had expired (the event happened before COVID). The responses he got varied greatly as to why he was or wasn’t an a-hole.
Now there’s another interesting story…read on:
AITA for upgrading to first class while traveling with my fiancé’s family
I was traveling from Washington to Florida with my fiancé’s family for the holidays. Our flight was at 8PM but it ended up being delayed for a couple of hours and I had a long stressful day at work so I asked my fiancé to upgrade us both to first class as I’m not used to sitting in the back and didn’t really find it that comfortable the last time we travelled with them. We had a good vacation, but after we came home my fiancé told me his mom and sister thought it was really inappropriate of us to switch to first class and that a couple of the kids were asking questions about why they couldn’t sit up there with us or why our hotel room was nicer. They were also mad that we went to some restaurants and did some other things that the rest of the family couldn’t afford. I don’t think it’s fair of them to get mad at us just because we can have nicer things, AITA?
So, was the poster an a-hole?
Well, it depends on who you ask. As of this writing, there have been about 440 replies (you can read them here). Some of them clarified whether or not the original poster (OP) was an a-hole because of what the OP and their fiancé did, not because they could afford to have/do nicer things. But the responses generally fell into one of these camps:
- OP was an a-hole because it was a family trip and if the plan was to do things as a family, they blew it.
- OP was not an a-hole because even if it’s a family trip, that doesn’t mean you have to be together 100% of the time.
- The whole family was a-holes because they did non-essential travel to Florida on a plane during the COVID pandemic.
The third response, by the way, was the one that was repeated the most often (which made me think that maybe there’s hope for us as a country after all. Either that or the people of Reddit are just smart and are on #teamscience and #teammedicine).
This particular AITA caught my eye because we’ve written articles about things that were, although not the same, related to some of the issues:
- How to travel in a group and not go insane (or want to kill each other)
- What do you do if you have TSA PreCheck and your partner doesn’t?
I think the main issue was that, unless it happened and OP didn’t mention it, they and the family needed to plan the vacation better, including expectations of the trip. If OP wanted to sit in first class, all they needed to do was mention it ahead of time, gauge how the family felt about that happening, and respond accordingly. Similarly, if it was the kind of trip where everyone was expected to be together all the time (kill me now, but still…), then that’s what you do – stay together and not the two of you go to a fancy restaurant, “just because you could,” when the rest of the family couldn’t afford a so-called “nicer” place like that.
What would you have said? Was the original poster an a-hole, or no? And why?
Feature Photo: Delta
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
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