If you're going to lecture people for rudeness, how about you don't be rude?
This just happened. My friend (29F) and I (31F) were sitting on a bench waiting for a bus. My friend happened to have her feet tucked up. She put them down just as an elderly man came over and he started lecturing her very loudly and rudely about putting her feet on the bench and how now he can't sit there because some people don't know better.
My friend ignored him, but I find being yelled at in public one of the scariest things that's ever happened to me (I was once screamed at for bumping someone's car and apologizing just made him angrier, and another man yelled at my mother when I was with her for the same thing, acting like I was out to ruin all paintwork), so this made me mad. I tried to tell him politely that he didn't need to be so rude (aka "Please don't be so angry with her") and he told me, also rudely, that he has every right to be mad because she should know better than to put her feet on the bench. Okay, maybe that's true, but what's ruder - putting your feet up on a bench that birds have shit on and has probably been puked on at some point, or yelling at a complete stranger who's minding her own business?
So what do you think?