Black woman says her Delta business class seatmate asked what she does for a living, and she answered with a ‘rich mom’ act

TikToker Tenicka B (@tenickab), who is Black, took to TikTok a few days ago to share how she handled a fellow passenger’s questions in business class. The New York City resident said she secured an upgrade on a Delta flight and that, as soon as she took her seat, the man next to her asked about her job. She said she took the question as him not believing she deserved to be there, so she answered with a performance of her own.

Tenicka’s TikTok video went viral, racking up over 988K views in less than a week. She said in her post, “I sat next to this man. He looks me up and down, you know, I can feel him breathing and looking at me. And he said, um, ‘What do you do for work? What do you do for a living?’” Rather than answer, she said, she took a different approach.

She recounted the conversation in her video, saying, “I looked at him, I said, ‘Oh, are you. Do you work for Delta? Do you work here?’” When the man said he did not work for the airline, she said, she kept going. “I said, ‘Oh, okay. Because I feel. Because this is my first time flying a commercial. Uh huh. And you see, on private, only the staff talk to you.’ I said, ‘So what are you doing here next to me?’”

Her response, in her words

Tenicka said that even after the man clarified that he was her seatmate, she kept up the act. “I said, ‘Oh, okay. Is that what they do on commercial flights? Okay? They sit next to you, and they talk to you?’” She said she slipped into a “rich mom” persona, asking him, “What do you want? And what are you asking me questions about who I am?”

She then held up her Birkin bag and asked, “Go put my bag up.” She added, “Please, can you help me? Yeah, cause I thought maybe all of you guys were on this flight to assist me.” Tenicka’s account could not be independently verified, and the passenger she describes has not been identified, so his side is not known.

Many commenters praised her quick thinking. One user wrote, “He wasn’t expecting two factor authentication on the line of questioning.” Another wrote, “I wish I was this quick-witted.”

Other commenters shared their own tactics for dealing with similar situations, such as telling strangers they don’t participate in public surveys or claiming they are not hiring.

Air travel has been the setting for other viral accounts of passengers being questioned about their seats. Esquire has published an essay on racism in first-class travel, and a Black woman on an American Airlines flight to Miami said a flight attendant asked to check her boarding pass when she took her first-class seat.

As one TikTok commenter put it, “Legend has it that he is still thinking about it till this day!”