I took a deep breath, trying to keep my frustration in check. I leaned down and politely tapped her on the shoulder. “Excuse me, ma’am? I believe you’re sitting in my seat.” She didn’t even twitch.

She just let out a heavy, theatrical sigh, shifted her weight, and pulled her blanket up a little higher, completely ignoring me. The guy sitting across the aisle from us caught my eye and raised his eyebrows, clearly entertained by the standoff.

I wasn’t about to surrender my hard-earned aisle seat to a bully in designer knitwear. I tapped her shoulder again, slightly firmer this time. “Excuse me. You are in seat 14C. That is my seat.”

This time, she aggressively ripped the sunglasses off her face and glared up at me. She didn’t apologize. She didn’t act confused. She just looked deeply annoyed that her fake-sleep strategy had failed. Instead of unbuckling her seatbelt and standing up to let me in, she let out a loud, exaggerated huff. She then flattened herself against the back of the seat, pulled her knees slightly to the side, and irritably waved her hand, gesturing for me to awkwardly squeeze past her legs and wedge myself into the middle seat.

It was the sheer audacity of the hand gesture that completely vaporized whatever remaining patience I had. She fully expected me to just obey and take a worse seat. I stood my ground in the aisle, looked her dead in the eye, and matched her annoyed energy. “I’m not the one getting in,” I said, keeping my voice calm, flat, and loud enough for the immediate vicinity to hear. “You are.”

She visibly flinched. It was clear she was entirely unaccustomed to people saying no to her.

The entitlement practically radiated off her as she realized I wasn’t going to be a pushover. Her face flushed an angry shade of red. Without saying a single word, she aggressively grabbed her heavy tote bag, yanking it out from under the seat, and shoved her way over to the window seat, throwing herself into it like a petulant toddler. She banged her elbow against the window frame on purpose, muttering something under her breath about how people these days have absolutely no manners. The irony was entirely lost on her.

I quietly slipped into my rightful aisle seat, stowed my personal item, and buckled up. The poor guy who eventually arrived to take the middle seat between us could immediately sense the hostile, freezing energy radiating from our row. The woman spent the entire taxiing process aggressively sighing, aggressively flipping the pages of a magazine, and purposely taking up as much space on the shared armrest as humanly possible. I just closed my eyes and ignored her. I had my seat, and that was all that mattered. I assumed her little temper tantrum would burn itself out once we were in the air.

I was dead wrong.