Oh, god! What incredible unfriendly and superficial these two persons were with Harriet.
It recalls me a scene from the movie green friend tomatoes.
I’m saying by memory so maybe I mistake something. When the character played by Katy Bates was going out of the malls and she crosses past with two young, pretty girls (the gold American girls) and they pressed her to put her shopping items in the car and leave her parking lot so they could use it. They did it in such dirty manners that she even was insult because of her physical appearance and age (if I’m not wrong). She attacked them back crashing her car into theirs while saying something like: Yeah, I’m older and my car is also bigger and with an insurance covers everything.

The interesting thing is that she realised how she couldn’t give less for the girls’ rude comments while in the past, because of different circumstances she would have felt pretty hurt by these comments.
Both poles Harriet was referring in her message, experienced by the same person.

Conclusion: Reacting to each rude behaviour people may have is a waste of time but from time to time it’s not so bad to hit the table once and place someone in their place.