Award-winning nurse Norma Rodgers recorded and shared an exchange on a United Airlines flight in which a passenger seated next to her consistently and brutally fat-shamed her and the passenger seated on the other side of her, until being moved and finally removed from the flight.
Before the flight began taxiing, the passenger seated in the middle seat adjacent to Rodgers, pulled out her phone and began complaining about the size of her co-passengers.
“I don’t know how I’m going to do this the next four hours … because they’re squishing me,” the woman says. “But at least they’ll keep me warm.”
The woman went so far as to loudly call the passengers sitting beside her “pigs,” regardless of the fact that they could clearly hear her.
Rodgers manages to keep her cool for the most part, interjecting occasionally, and finally requesting that the flight attendant find the offending passenger a new seat, because “I will not be verbally abused by this b—- or by anyone else.”
The flight attendant proceeded to lead the woman to another seat, but the woman’s presence on the plane continued to anger other passengers, and she was eventually removed from the flight.
As the Washington Post notes, the controversy also reveals a broader troubling trend within airline travel. In the last few months, countless stories have bubbled into the media about passenger conflicts while boarding planes, with other passengers and with flight staff, reflecting the powder-keg nature of being trapped in a large cabin with another group of people for countless hours, especially when long delays are involved.
Was the woman justified in her anger, or did she go too far? Let us know in the comments below!
