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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.
Two things here. Firstly, I am told by New Yorkers that this is common practice, in which case it seems hard to place much blame on the kids in that regard, if it's a widely accepted norm. Secondly, even if they are wrong in that regard, it doesn't exonerate the woman. Her actions were still petty even if one shouldn't try to 'reserve' bikes in that way.
...among the antisocial portion of the community.
I suppose blame the mayor and the rest of the libs who are supporting the antisocial teen group as well?
Getting home on time and in a inexpensive manner that you are legally entitled to is petty?
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First, the only person who I've seen that claims it's common is one of the people in the story's sister who seems like a motivated agent. From the NewsOne article op linked:
Perhaps it's common but so is turnstyle hopping, and ubiquitousness doesn't make it moral.
A lady rented a bike and then wanted to use the bike she rented. She had every right to be as petty as she wished when someone wanting to use the bike in the future but unwilling to make a claim at the same time or prior to her tried to prevent her from using the bike she rented.
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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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