Courtesy tips for metro passengers

The BBQ Pit
#1

…occasioned by certain authentic misadventures experienced during my daily commute.

1a) If you are boarding a train, please wait until the people getting off the train have gotten off. The driver can see you. Unless the train is full, s/he will wait until you get on board.

1b) If you are already aboard the train, do not stand in front of the doors unless you are getting off. If the train is crowded and it is necessary for you to stand in front of the doors, when the doors open you may hold onto the rails beside them and step outside of the train and to one side of the doors, then get back on board after others have disembarked.

Penalty for violation: being forced to repeat your crime at Lucien-L’Allier metro immediately prior to or after a Habs game and being trampled by a horde of irate hockey fans.

  1. It is considered polite to give up one’s seat to elderly people. It is not considered polite for an elderly person to glare at someone for not giving up their seat when there is an empty seat not half a metre away.

Penalty for violation: having another passenger courteously give up their seat to you, then being strapped into it until your bladder control gives out.

  1. Do not stand two abreast in a crowded escalator. Do not walk up the escalator beside a row of standing passengers and then suddenly stop, causing circulation to grind to a halt.

Penalty for violation: being fed face-first into the scary looking metal comb-shaped thing at the top of the escalator.

  1. Do not stand underneath a no-smoking sign and smoke.

Penalty for violation: instant death.

  1. Do not run for a metro whose doors have already closed. They will not be opened again for you, especially if the train has already begun to gather way. In particular, do not charge directly at me while I am running for a metro which is still stopped and whose doors are still open.

Penalty for violation: being strapped between platforms at Lionel-Groulx metro and being decorated by a local youth with a spray can.

  1. Do not curse and swear at the ticket changer in English.

Penalty for violation: being forced to sing “O Canada” and “God Save The Queen” repeatedly at Préfontaine metro.

  1. Do not make loud homophobic comments while aboard a metro train.

Penalty for violation: being strapped to a bannister at Beaudry metro and being forced to watch two men enjoy a long, deep kiss.

  1. It is rude to make your fellow Scotsmen apologize for their cultural heritage. Therefore, under no circumstances is a bagpipe to be played in a metro station.

Penalty for violation: you will be forced to rim Fat Bastard. And then dropped in the Saint Lawrence River.

#2

Ooh, ooh, can I add a bus peeve?

Do not assume you are the only one having to get off at a very busy stop. When a whole lot of people stand up and move to the door, don’t wait until 15 seconds before the bus stops and push though all of them violently, even though they are all getting off at the same stop as well. Wait until the crowd exits the bus first.

Pusnishment for disobeying:
Bludgeoning with many many many elbows.

See how YOU like it, fuckers.

#3

Stand to the right, walk to the left.

#4

Hey, cool. I was just thinking about starting the same thread about the London Underground…

I usually push firmly forward with my elbows out. This ensures that either people move or are moved post haste.

Corollary: if someone offers you a seat, don’t take it as a personal insult and bite their head off. They’re not implying that you’re feeble, they’re just being nice.

Punishment: Never getting a seat again. Ever.

I stand behind them and say loudly “EXCUSE ME!”. Usually they move forward or over.

Hear hear! Especially on trains, where you can’t move away. I once asked a 15 year old schoolgirl to put out a cigarette. When I received an obscenity in reply, I pulled out a bottle of water from my bag and said, “Look, there’s a £100 fine for smoking. Any guesses what the fine for spitting water on someone might be?”. She put it out. :slight_smile:

Corollary: no musical instrument at all is to be played in an Underground station unless you have some degree of competence in playing it. Vigorously strumming an out-of-tune guitar while bellowing “Don’t Look Back in Anger” by Oasis does NOT make me want to give you money, and anyone tootling away on a plastic recorder risks having it rammed up a randomly chosen orifice.

A few more:
9) It is considered proper to actually buy a ticket to travel. Sneaking through the entrance/exit gates behind me on my ticket is extremely inconsiderate.

Penalty: having “Cheap Bastard” tattooed on your forehead.

  1. The train drivers do make some effort to stay to the timetable. Please do not hinder their efforts by sticking a foot or other body part in the door until your friends arrive, which tends to be about the time the next train would have gotten there anywhere.

Penalty: having the train leave with said body part stuck in door, until it is scraped off slowly by the tunnel walls.

You know, normally I’m such a nice, mild-mannered person…:cool:

#5

Do not get off the escalator and stand there, looking around. If you must stand in the metro stop with a blank look on your face, step to the side, so that other people can get off the escalator.

#6

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by jr8 *

Heh. Reminds me of when my family was vacationing in Dublin. We were riding the bus and my mom was sitting next to a woman who was trying to smoke a cigarette without anyone noticing it. My mom, being a militant anti-smoker, was extremely bothered, and decided to say something really acidic to make her quit.
My mom (with a thick Swedish accent): Please don’t smoke. I don’t like it.
The woman put her cigarette out and got off at the next stop. My mom really knows how to choose her words…

Please continue.

#7

ANOTHER TWO dickweedly motherfucking losers today standing RIGHT in the FUCKING DOORWAY when people are trying to get on. What a bunch of fucking sons of bitches. If I’d had somewhat more momentum I’d have knocked their asses to the ground and walked right the fuck over their prostrated forms, just before the doors close and compress their major genital regions in their painful vicelike grip, then the train accelerates and their big dumb faces are smeared along the platform until their torsos are knocked off by reaching the end of the platform at 60 kph and they die in horrible agony as blood spurts from their ruined cadavers. ARGH! MOTHERFUCKERS!

#8

If I didn’t know you lived in Canada, matt, I’d swear you were describing the Washington, DC Metro. I concur with every complaint you made.

This morning, Leigh-Anne and I were walking down the escalator and down the platform to the train. As we walk, I hear the unmistakeable “click click click click” of a omwn, in heels, running to catch the train. She could have gone around us to my right, but instead, she chose to shove between Leigh-Anne and the enclosed shelter on her left, quite rudely. She runs through the door of the train, and without changing pace, we stroll on, right behind her. Uh, looks like you weren’t in any danger of missing it, you fucking moron. And thanks for saying, “Excuse me” to my wife.

#9

Ohh me too me too, I have another peeve from the underground: Please, when you’re sandwiched on the tube during the morning rush hour, nose to nose with every single other passenger, don’t read the Finacnial Times, read a SMALL newspaper, because none of us enjoyed your Big Swinging Dicked City Wideboy twelve acre newspaper being shoved in our faces, covering up our paperbacks and being elbowed by your every time you need to turn the page.

Punishment? You are cursed so that every time you open your newspaper on the tube to impress us all with how desperately you need to be in touch with events at the cutting edge of international finance, your copy of Horny Houswives falls out from between its pages.

Grrrrrrrr.

Sub-Rant for the Underground: You totally screwed up the rail privatisation so that now nothing runs on time, ticket prices have gone through the roof, trains are getting derailed all over the place and people are actually dying because the railway operators care more about making money than making sure the tracks aren’t falling apart. So Don’t Privatise the Damn Underground Ya Morons.

Off-message rant over.