A woman on a Delta Air Lines flight went viral last week after a fellow passenger accused her of using an earring to “poke” him during an armrest dispute. On Sunday, the woman offered her side of the story, saying she resorted to the tactic because he repeatedly encroached on her seat and touched her arm.
“Met a very passive aggressive passenger on @Delta today. Immediately angry about my using the armrest before takeoff,” a man named Otto, whose account is now private, posted to X. “She installed an earring on her sleeve to poke me. I didn’t mind ’till the turbulence when it stabbed me.”
Otto said she refused to remove the earring and “told me I was taking up too much of my seat ’cause I’m a man.’”
“This legal? Also, how do people get like this?” he added, saying that he notified the flight attendant, who told him to wait until they arrived at the gate.
@Ottosipe on X
The woman, who identified herself as Kadia Tubman, said on social media that the man had been invading her space and that “sometimes you gotta wear your earring on your sleeve.”
Tubman said she initially didn’t mind that Otto was using the armrest between them while he was working, but he started taking up more space and crossed the “armrest boundary.” She said he kept rubbing against her arm, lifting the armrest, and waking her up.
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She said she asked Otto to move over, and he initially complied before shifting back. Tubman then took out her earring and stuck it through her sleeve.
“At first it didn’t poke him when he leaned over into my seat. … When it finally did because he kept moving his arm up & down (and not bc of turbulence like he claimed) he was soo bothered. He immediately took out his phone,” she wrote on Instagram.
“[H]e said i was being passive aggressive. I said yes, i absolutely am. He said my earring was a weapon(!) wanted my name to get his lawyer involved & demanded i remove my earring. When I refused he asked if it was necessary, I said yes, clearly because you finally stopped touching me,” she added.
Tubman said Otto then moved toward the window into a position “he could have sat in the whole time.”
Once she got off the plane and reached the gate, she said Otto walked right past her. “I said, ‘sir, sir.’ He kept walking. I waited for the captain and eventually left,” she wrote.
Otto said that he “had to get to work and did not want to wait around with the passive aggressor.”
The viral post divided the internet over whose actions were justified.
One person said Tubman’s tactic was “next level insane,” while others called it genius.
“Her arm is in her lap. If the earring poked you then you’re definitely stretched into her space and are in the wrong,” one person responded to Otto’s post.
“That is not a nice person. I’m sure it’s skirting the line of legality since she did it with the intent to harm, where a simple conversation would suffice,” another person wrote.
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