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Notes -
Update on the Black Teens Versus Pregnant Nurse story.
This twitter thread seems like a reasonable summary. I know it's not entirely unbiased, but absent additional contradictory evidence, the story seems to basically check out like this:
Kids had checked out the ebikes for a ride, and docked them before the 45-minute "free" period ended, planning to undock them to resume riding. (This is apparently a pretty common practice?)
They're sitting on the bikes chilling, when Comrie, the pregnant nurse, approaches and asks to have one of the bikes.
The teens say no, unmoved by her appeals for consideration for her pregnancy.
She scans (checks out) a bike one of the kids is sitting on, and tries to take it.
The kerfluffle we saw on video ensues. The kids apparently filmed it with a legitimate fear that she would turn it into "gang of teens harasses pregnant white lady."
So basically, no one looks like an entirely innocent victim here. The kids were just hanging out in preparation to check out the bikes again, but since they were docked, you don't really get to "call dibs" on a bike you are not currently renting. Technically Comrie was entitled to take an available bike; the kids shouldn't have been squatting on them. They were also kind of jerks for not showing a little compassion for an obviously pregnant woman (their version is that if they'd given up the bike, one of them would have had to find some other way to get back to the Bronx).
That said, deciding "Screw you, I'm taking your bike anyway, get off" wasn't great behavior on her part, even if legally justified. I cut her more slack because apparently she just got off a 12-hour shift, and she was pregnant.
However, even if the teens were perhaps being inconsiderate and less than gentlemanly, the narrative that's basically portrayed them as ganging up on her and trying to steal her bike appears to be inaccurate.
There's a whole lot of people in this thread who don't understand that being in the wrong isn't a zero-sum game. Like you said, it's hard to tell if the woman actually acted like the teens claim she did (since they have every incentive to lie and all), but still. Assuming they are telling the truth, it sounds like everyone here acted poorly.
As I said, being in the wrong is not a zero sum game. They can be completely wrong in their actions, and she can be wrong in hers. I certainly am not saying that she was, because (as you, @Amadan and I all agree) they are likely to be lying just to save face. All I'm saying is that, if they are telling the truth, the nurse can be wrong without absolving them one bit.
I'm not trying to defend them, and I don't understand why you act like I am. I'm simply pushing back on the idea that to say the nurse acted poorly means that the kids are absolved for their actions.
How is paying to rent a bike that's available wrong? Someone wanting to keep it, but who didn't remnt it because they have to return it before getting a second free use, needs to allow other free and paying renters to do so.
If you want to check out a library book again, it needs to go through the return process so that you can't just keep it indefinitely when others wish to check it out.
Except that isn't what happened according to the teens. According to them, what she did was to scan a bike that one of them was sitting on and had said he was going to still use. This is roughly equivalent to if you find someone at the library who has a book on the desk in front of them, who says "sorry but I'm going to check this book out still", and you snatch it off the desk and check it out yourself. That isn't breaking any laws or anything but would be kind of a dick move.
I'm not saying that this nurse is the worst person in the world, or that she should be fired, or anything like that. I am just saying that as the kids tell it, she was kind of rude to them. That's all.
This is more like someone checking out a book for 2 weeks, returning it, and then camping by the shelf until it becomes available again so that no one else can read it.
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She was allegedly “rude” to people who were scamming Citi Bikes. It’s only rude once you accept the anti-social activity by the teens was appropriate.
No, that is not true. I can point out that both are wrong, there's no need for me to choose one side to be in the right. As I keep saying, many people in this thread need to learn that being in the wrong is not zero-sum.
Even accepting your premise. She would be a -.000000001 and they would be a -10
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Someone both has no legal claim and no moral claim to X. Someone else has the legal and moral claim to X. Saying they are both wrong seems like a really hard claim. What did the person with a legal and moral claim to the bike do wrong here?
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He may have been sitting on it, but he hadn't rented it, thus it was available it just had someone attempting to intimidate others from using it until the system allowed him to get another inexpensive turn. He can either pay to extend his rental or allow someone else to use the shared rental.
This seems far more like someone claiming that they're previous check out should give them priority over another being first in line after they return a highly demanded book to me.
Again, nobody is saying that the kids were in the right to do this in the first place. I agree that it certainly seems like they were in the wrong to try to monopolize the e-bikes the way they were. But, if we assume their account of things to be true, she acted poorly on her end as well. If someone is monopolizing a book at the library, the correct course of action is to report them to the authorities, not to take matters into your own hands and snatch the book off the desk in front of them.
This is what I'm talking about when I keep saying it isn't a zero-sum game. Assuming that the kids' account is true:
The kids were wrong to sit on the bikes and call dibs on them.
The woman was wrong to just scan the bike while the kid was sitting on it trying to call dibs, rather than just finding another option for transportation.
The kids were wrong to not just give up the bike they wanted to use so the tired pregnant lady could have it.
The kids compounded that wrong by filming the whole thing and trying to look like innocent victims.
At no step of this sequence of events did anyone act correctly. I don't need to overlook the kids' behavior to assess that the woman was rude in her own way under this view of the events.
Not analogous to what she did. And also a totally different situation. The relevant question for you is: How does she get home at the time she is legally and morally entitled to do so. The only correct answer is that rando teen #4 has to stop doing illegal things.
Incorrect. She judged that this was the cheapest and fastest option for her to return home. It is no different than if she parked her car in a parking lot an these teens thought it was cool to pose for pictures on her car and refused to let her use it to drive home.
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Which is a nice catch 22 since reporting black men to the authorities is a much bigger violation of norms since they're at high risk of being shot. This sounds to me like her option is to be a second class citizen who can't ever win.
It's an available bike, if the guy sitting on it wants to use it, he was welcome to check it out or extend his ride. Since he didn't it's now anyone's bike to claim. It's a shared resource. This is like saying that one person can sit in front of the crab legs at a buffet just eating them as the bucket is refilled, and anyone who reaches past them is violating norms and partly to blame. No, the person not letting others use the unclaimed bike is wholly in the wrong.
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Since in the video she wa
You accidentally.
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Because people who are not petty children don't stoop to that level. They were misbehaving in gaming the system, maybe, but that doesn't make it a mature response to try to take it after they have clearly indicate that they are about to use it again. Much as in a library, if someone was keeping out longer by returning and loaning it again, and if you asked that person whether the book they had placed on the table was going to be taken out and they said yes, it would still be an absurd and unbecoming response to snatch it up and take it to loan it yourself to forestall them.
I think your book example falls short.
First, the bike was means of transportation for a woman who has been pregnant for 6 months old to get home. She wasn’t just trying to catch up on the latest book of the week. I’ve seen my wife being six month’s pregnant numerous times. It isn’t easy. Getting this bike probably made her physical journey home a lot easier.
So your theory of the case is that good manners requires a pregnant women to physically inconvenience herself to accommodate misbehaving teens gaming the system who of course were able to walk to another bike station with ease?
No good manners would dictate the teens surrender — if they had lawfully had it — the right to the pregnant woman. It is even more a massive violation to try to prevent the pregnant woman from taking the bike that is legally hers.
I just cannot imagine the situation where the woman was the ill mannered one in the context of her being sups preg.
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If you have returned something it's not yours it's available to anyone again. If you want to keep it the app has a simple method to do so, you just have to pay for it. He had returned the bike making it available to all and was wrong to prevent someone else from using it.
When you return a book you've checked out, you're welcome to check it out again after anyone else who has reserved it has done so, this is like claiming that since you had it checked out last you should be able to bypass the line and be first.
People keep saying this but what these rules are is completely irrelevant to the discussion of whether it was good form to take the bike anyway. I know it was available to everyone when they docked it, but that has no bearing on questions of manners.
The whole point of limiting free rides to 45 minutes and increasing the fee on paid rides over time and requiring a user to wait between rides is to allow other people to use a shared bike whether they are free users or paid. It's not right to claim a shared resource over that period just because you had it previously.
Their ride was over, unless they were willing to pay to extend it. They were welcome to end their ride, or start paying, but not to return their bike and claim that they were still using it because they wished to do so later.
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Like half the point of book term limits is to allow round-robin lending. If you're swiping the book, you're defecting against the person who wants to re-loan it, but that person is defecting against the library system.
I agree they are defecting against the system, but that still doesn't mean it's a mature response to go very far in trying to stop him. In manners if not in politics, 'they go low, we go high' pretty much always applies.
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