Wanna play a hand of Hold Em for your soul? 
Yeah, here’s the thing about the urban north, sugar… we have things to do. Places to go, people to see, lands to conquer. So do get out of our way like a sweetheart, won’t you? 
So it’s supposed to be somehow “improper” to walk on an escalator? That’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard.
How about if you go on considering it strange to walk on an escalator, and some others can go on considering it perfectly normal. Some people will stand (I usually stand unless I’m feeling extra energetic or in a hurry), and some people will walk, and because we’re reasonable people, we’ll agree to just let everyone have their own opinion on which they’d rather do. And certain people will decide that because they like to stand still, they should refuse to let the walkers by. And those people will have a name: assholes.
Two data points, as I’m just now home from the D.C. Metro:
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Almost every Metro station has at least one set of escalators which is not accompanied by stairs. Which means that if any escalators are out of order – which, this being D.C., they invariably are – people have to use the out-of-order escalators for…wait for it…walking. The horror!
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When walking up the (moving, and also ass-long) Bethesda escalator twenty minutes ago, I took especial care to note that as I passed the normal-sized gentleman standing to the right, I touched him, brushed into him, or otherwise intruded upon his personal space not at all. This is, in fact, the norm.
Okey-doke, y’all?
Well, apart from being correct, that is. If I can be bothered, I will take a photo of the numerous signs posted all over the escalators on my trip to work saying “STAND ON THE RIGHT”. Maybe I will manage to include some of the people walking on the left without falling, invading sovereign nations or inadvertently challenging a Stander to a duel.
Personally, I like to take the steps two at a time, flailing my arms as I go and ululating enthusiastically. Most people take me for a busker, and offer small change.
Ah - no need. Note how the signs are placed approximately once every three metres. They are trying to tell us something; but what?
Now someone’s going to come in here and make the argument that that’s all well and good, but they’re still not required to have any common courtesy on escalators that don’t have such signs…
I’ll one up you on your fear.
I contend that as long as I don’t see the sign, I don’t have to follow any rules.
I win!
:: scrapes Rigmarole off of the tube station floor ::
I’m not with this OP really. I’m sure there are probably supersized escalators in the US, but in the UK its pretty difficult to squeeze by even if a person isn’t holding shopping without nudging them. An unexpected nudge is a bit disconcerting on an escalator.
Its not like those who, as noted above, walk four abreast on the footpath/sidewalk. At the end of the escalator, people usually head off in all different directions, its not like you’re trying for minutes to walk around them but can’t because of parked cars etc blocking your way. Or maybe I’ve just been on really really short escalators
I hate being in escalators with Mom. No matter how many times I tell her to stand on the right, I have to say it again. Every. Time. We’ve been on the escalator going up, I’ve told her to stand on the right, she’s said “oh, oh” and moved to the right (still taking up a lot of space, but she’s both fat and one of those expansive people whose personal space is about 3 times their physical size); then we’re on the escalator going down… “MOM! To the right, please” “oh, oh!”
Mind you, it’s better than it was a few years back… the first time I noticed her standing on the freaking left, she stopped at the top of the elevator demanding an explanation. I had to grab her, take her out of the way of several hundred people (Barcelona subway, 6pm on a weekday) and Point To The Signs. Then I had to explain that no, being over 60 does not mean she gets to bend those rules; it gives her discounts in museums but not on fines.
Sometimes I wonder which of us is the alien.
Stand right, walk left.
Sorry, I agree with the pitter. As far as I’m concerned, it’s proper etiquette to make room on the escalator for passersby. You may not be in a hurry, but others are. Be nice and be safe. Move over.
I’ve been packed on some buses and trains where I’m pretty certain that has occurred.
Actual conversation on the subway this past summer:
“Usually when I’m this close to someone, there are bodily fluids being exchanged.”
“Well, our sweat is mingling. Does that count?”
That’s exactly how folks in this part of the South behave. If they see they’re in the way, they move. They don’t lecture the person about how they shouldn’t be in such a hurry.
Thanks so much for your concern. Next time, I’ll schedule my panic attacks to coincide with your convenience, instead of my own. Lord knows they never take me by surprise.
Reread my first post, on page one.
As you said,
You are the exception and not the rule and it really sounds like Loopydude’s Bozo was just a pugnacious jerk, not someone that suffers panic attacks on an escalator. Every normal rule has an exception. Your panic attacks are one of the exceptions. Holding 2 bags while trying to control 2 pre-schoolers is another exception I would well understand. Large weary guy, blocking the way for no apparent reason, who will not move when requested, this I do not understand and I do not think I would want to understand.
Jim {Good luck with those Panic attacks, can you do anything for them?}
I’m only up to halfway through page 3 of this thread, but you strike me as the first “moverighter” to come off as reasonable so far. The thing is, if I’m having a panic attack, I may well come off as a pugnacious, jerky, large weary guy, blocking the way for no apparent reason, who will not move when requested. In such a state I am in no position to explain myself to someone who I perceive wants to put my well being at risk because he cannot manage his own time. Trust me, as much as you don’t want to deal with me, I don’t want to deal with you times ten.
People may have very valid reasons for not moving right, and those reasons might not be visibly obvious. The sensible thing to do is to not assume belligerence, give the person the benefit of the doubt, not shove by a person on a moving staircase, and to suck it up and wait.
Although I will say that a person who wants to “take it outside” is probably a belligerent jerk.
I went through three stages in my assessment of this guy: Exasperated anger, remorse over my reaction, and then dismissive derision. What a fucking douchebag. I mean, after the guy offered to take me to the mat, I had little choice but escalate or fume in silence. I did the latter, of course. Later, after reading my own angry post and seeing the “calm the fuck down” messages, I though, yeah, I do really need some anger management now and again.
But you know what? Fuck that guy with a rusty Sawzall. What a complete and utter fucking piece of shit. I did absolutely nothing wrong. I made a polite, completely normal request, and he treated me like dirt for absolutely no reason but because he could. Complete, total fucking asshole. I know exactly what kind of guy he was: A loser fuckwit bully who can’t excel at anything but being a giant sack of lipous manure, a petty cretin whose only talent is planting his worthless-sack-of-shit-carcass in the way of genuine human beings with lives worth living and the desire to go about doing so unimpeded. I bet his greatest sense of accomplishment is derived from winning games of “chicken” with hapless pedestrians on city sidewalks who have no beef with this fuck, don’t know him, never would want to, and who simply wish to get from point A to point B without some idiot playing half-wit power games with them.
And to those who actually believe I was somehow inconveniencing or otherwise unjustly victimizing this dungheap: I’d ask you to lick my sweaty unwiped taint, but I’m too polite. Instead, I’ll just hope you meet my buddy from Providence and a troop of his friends someday, no, every day, in traffic, on the sidewalk, on a stairway, elevator, movie theater, supermarket, train, plane, bus, or maybe even your own front lawn. I hope he treats you as kindly as he treated me, and I hope you get to know really well, on a very regular basis, 'till death do you part, just how it feels to be fucked with for no good reason while innocently attempting to go about your normal life.