A thought-provoking meme is going viral on Reddit that has people debating over who to give your seat to on a train: a mother holding a baby, an elderly woman with a cane, or a man on crutches. The poor guy dealing with the dilemma appears to be traveling to or from work with a briefcase in his hand.
As everyone knows, it’s a common courtesy on a packed train or bus to give up your seat to people with babies, the elderly and those who are disabled or injured. So, in this scenario, everyone has a right to the seat; who is the most deserving?
The woman with the baby has her hands full and her little one is sleeping. It’d be nice for the man to give her a stable seat to take a load off and help the baby sleep throughout the ride. Plus, nobody wants to ride the train next to a cranky baby.
The elderly woman also deserves the seat because she is probably tired and needs to take a load off. She gets extra points because, as a society, we tend to go out of our way to help seniors. What would happen if she fell while standing on the moving train?
Finally, the guy with the crutches also deserves the seat because he has to expend a lot of effort just to stand up and his arms have to be tired from helping him get around with the bum foot.
One guy thought the man should let the 3 people looking to take his seat decide. “It’s better to just get up and let them fight amongst themselves,” Kron123456789 wrote. “Leave the seat and leave the decision to the three,” Aggravating-Pound598 added.
Others thought that the 3 people staring at the seat appear angry and don’t deserve the seat. “If they’re looking at me like this, they better keep standing ’cause I ain’t going anywhere,” falsebaby8268 wrote. “They don’t have any right to the seat, it’s only out of generosity that someone can offer the seat. You are not obligated to generosity in general and towards hostile people in special,” gerMean added.
Some thought that all things being equal, the person with the best attitude should get the seat.
“The politest person gets the seat,” Logical_Dragonfly_92 wrote. “If they all look at me with such arrogant expressions of entitlement, I’d keep my seat for myself. Otherwise, I give it to the person that seems most in danger or in pain of them,” AhmedAbuGhadeer added.
There were more than a few people who thought the man on crutches was most deserving of the seat but were weirded out by his uncanny resemblance to Adolph Hitler. “Honestly, crutches Hitler probably needs it most, from a medical POV. Falling on a broken leg is no bueno. Mamma and grandma got 2 feet,” BadluckBrians wrote. “If you don’t want to fall on a broken leg, you probably shouldn’t have attacked Poland in 1939,” Understepped added.
This person may have the best response.
“I’d offer to a lady with an infant as this will help two people,” Barneyishere1 suggested.
The man’s dilemma in the meme seems like the Kobayashi Maru on “Star Trek,” a test that Starfleet Academy cadets take to determine how they would behave in a situation without a solution or a “no-win” scenario. “The purpose [of the test] is to experience fear, fear in the face of certain death, to accept that fear and maintain control of one’s self and one’s crew. This is a quality expected in every Starfleet captain,” Mr. Spock once said.
According to Spock, behaving correctly and maintaining control is the key to coming out ahead in a situation where you can’t win. If we extend that logic to the problem our friend on the train faces, being that there is no right or wrong answer, the key is to handle it with as much poise as possible. And then hop off the train at the next exit.