How to fold a buggy

There's a foreign lady who regularly boards one of our busy, high-frequency urban services. Buses run every 10 minutes and she normally boards at her stop between 0800-0830 pushing her child in a buggy. Although buses are busy at these times, I've yet to ask her to fold the buggy as there is insufficient room on board. Usually, if the buggy zone is occupied by passengers, I'll ask for them to move to another seat downstairs and they happily do so.

Today, however, she had to fold the buggy. The way she reacted you'd think she had just been raped.

What an absolutely horrid, selfish and nasty woman she is. The lower saloon was completely full of old ladies and their shopping trolleys (it is market day) and three suitcases were stowed on the small luggage rack above the front near-side wheel arch. While I could have asked passengers to vacate the fold-up seats, there was nowhere for them to go and as they were all octogenarians, they wouldn't ascend the stairs to the upper saloon and I wasn't going to face being handbagged by asking them to stand.

So they buggy-pushing selfish bitch was told that if she wanted to travel she would need to fold her buggy AND carry it up the stairs with her.

Obviously this would be very arduous and not something I would embark upon. But what really got my goat was the vitriol she showed when I then told her that the only other thing I could suggest is to catch the following bus in 10 minutes.

And I do not care what colour your skin is or what your ethnicity is. Irrespective of the language barrier, she had eyes. She saw I was completely stacked downstairs. It was obvious that she selfishly wanted to force her buggy on and to hell with others who'd be inconvenienced.

It didn't happen today.

Common Sense Solution: More situations like that which the buggy-pusher faced today need to occur to stop these people thinking that they have a right greater than fare-paying passengers, to bring their buggy on board. DDA legislation forced bus operators to employ low-floor vehicles that can accommodate wheelchairs and since these passengers are few and far between, they allow unfolded buggies to occupy the area.