Having recently been surrounded by the new politeness campaign from tfl, I was wondering whether it had had any effect on the attitudes of people on (particularly) buses. Here are three occasions in which people demonstrated that they maybe need a little more prompting than the rest of us:
1) The girls on the back of the 493 bus who played Sean Kingston's 'Beautiful Girls' over and over again for 45 minutes at the full tinny volume that their phone would allow. They'd occasionally sing along, but mostly they'd just have shouted conversations over the top (I did mention this in 'most annoying song' of 2007 previously, but I thought it bore repeating).
2) The bloke who jumped onto a 430 and ran straight to the back of the top deck without paying. The driver kept the bus at the bus stop for five minutes, as the passengers got more and more frustrated. The driver shouted up for a while asking the guy to come down and pay (which he refused to do, mostly using the words 'fuck', 'off' and 'mate') before finally giving up and continuing with the journey. On this occasion, the driver had the last laugh, though, as three stops later a ticket inspector got on (as I got off) and headed straight upstairs at the driver's request.
3) My dad was on a train when a ticket inspector came onto the carriage. As he passed the toilet, a woman sitting nearby pointed out that there were two guys hiding in there. The inspector opened the toilet with a key and chucked the two (ticketless) teenagers off the train. After he'd left, though, the woman who had pointed them out came under a fair amount of verbal abuse for the rest of the journey from people in the carriage apparently suggesting that she was a 'grass' and shouldn't have revealed that they were hiding there.
4) Finally, I was sitting on a 430 bus last night on my way home when a man got on and sat in front of me (at the front of the top deck). He stuck his feet up on the ledge in front of the front window, rolled himself a cigarette, cracked open a can of special brew and then turned his iPod up so loud that I could hear the beat from his music through his headphones, even though I was listening to my own music. He then started to tap his feet against the front window in time with the music, to sing loudly along with it, and finally to start weeping. I really wanted to get a photo of him to put up here, but I wasn't entirely sure how he'd react to (even stealthy) use of a mobile phone camera, and since I didn't want to end up with a knife in the neck, I left him to it without any photographic record.
CodeSOD: Secondary Waits
1 day ago
5 comments:
yeah public transport can be a drag as people can be so inconsiderate.
It amuses me that the Merseytravel campaign to urge people not to put their feet on the seats involves a cartoon of a scally (chav) with his feet on the seat and the words "putting your feet on the seats is anti-social" the irony being scallies are the epitome of anti-social.
Never experienced anyone hiding in toilets to fair dodge, but I think the woman was right and the idiots calling her a grass need shooting.
The weeping man will probably not be able to hear within a few years, so take solace in that.
Public transport needs some form of ass kicking rules for disruptive passengers as it need to be seen as something good not a place where people who don't know how to conduct themselves in public congrigate.
oh by the way it's Merseyrail not merseytravel, I forgot what it was but didn't think merseytravel sounded right
the weeping man sounds kind of sad. Maybe he was listening to a song that reminded him of his recently departed wife/kid/dog and drinking the special brew to try and forget.
i find commuters mostly fine although in too much of a rush and with an inflated sense of self-importance about the rush they are in, thereby excusing their barging through you.
That said I find slow moving people really annoying too, especially tourists.
"Yes, it's tower bridge, ooooh. Now get out of my way, I want to get home"
Also, if you'e going to try and take a photo across an entire stretch of pavement, not leaving anyone a way around you, you should expect me to ignore you and walk straight through. It is perfectly possible to take a photo of the river and leave a half meter behind you for me to walk in.
Well that turned into a bit of a rant, damn tourists.
Yeah, the last one was less annoying and more interesting, but it was what inspired the post, so I didn't want to leave it out.
He could simply have been weeping over the injustices of the world, of course.
Nowt special about that. I do it all the time...
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