A woman has questioned her morals after refusing to share her food with a hungry child on the subway. She explained she didn't want to open her shopping on a dirty train since she didn't know how long they'd be stopped for.
The refusal caused the mum of the child to give her "dirty looks" which made her feel uncomfortable during the remaining journey, the Mirror reports. She took to Reddit following the interaction, saying: "I occasionally make the trek to a popular, but cheap, health food supermarket a little bit out of the way to get groceries for the month.
"Yesterday was one of those days. I was on the subway back to my apartment when the train stopped in the tunnel. The conductor got on the loudspeaker and said we were being held at a stop, we'd move again as soon as possible.
"We ended up being stuck for 30 minutes, super annoying but oh well. Around the 10 minute mark a kid around five-years-old sitting across from me started squirming, complaining he was bored and hungry."
The woman went on to explain that the mum tried to calm the child down by asking around for snacks but it began having a tantrum.
She continued: "The lady all of a sudden turned to me, and asked if I had bought any granola bars or something and if I could give one to him. Which, no I hadn't, and I told her just as much. She then asked if I would open up the box of crackers (visible from the top of the bag) and give some to her kid.
"Here's the thing - at this point I don't know how long we were going to be stuck in the subway, and I really didn't like the idea of opening food in there. So I just told her 'No, sorry, I don't want to open them here'. She said 'Wow you're a nice lady, that's for sure...'
"She kept giving me dirty looks for the rest of the stop and kept doing so until she got off before me."
After leaving the train and replaying the situation in her head, the woman started to question her actions and regrets not sharing her snacks.
She said: "I told my partner about this and she said that I'm not in the wrong, she's glad I didn’t open our groceries on the subway.
"On the other hand, I'm starting to feel really bad about it because it was a hungry kid, and of course you want to give a hungry kid food. I don't know what to think."
In response, one user said: "I can't imagine ever asking a stranger to feed my kid and getting annoyed that they didn't - that's some weird entitlement she has."
Another user added: "I feel like the bare minimum you can do if you are a parent travelling with a child is carry some water and crackers for emergencies. It had also only been 10 minutes.
"If you had sat there for hours I could understand asking you for help and pooling resources but a five-year-old kid can survive not eating for a while."
A third user said: "I could see it if they were stuck somewhere for hours/days. But this was a half an hour. The kid was feeling peckish, he was not going hungry."