Moron number 1: The pole is not for you to lean your ass on for balance while you read your magazine. Like how the cool metal feels, squishing up between your big ol’ buttcheeks ? We don’t need you streaking that pole up with ass-sweat any damn time of the day but when it’s fucking rushhour, get your ass off the pole and hold on with a hand like the rest of the civilized people. There’s no room for anyone else to hold on when your ass surrounds the pole.
Moron number 2: Look, I’ve had colds before, and sometimes you just have to pull out a tissue and blow your nose, and you don’t care that people are around to hear your nasal symphony. But, hell, if you’re snorking away that hard and that long and you’re not getting any pretty green Rorshachs in your Kleenex, wait till you get home and dig it out with a goddamned salad fork.
Moron number 3: Unless your kid spilled your perfume bottle on you as you were headed out the door and you didn’t have time to change, there is no excuse for smelling like that. Even people working the perfume corridor at department stores would be squinting from the smell of you. Go stand next to Moron #2 - maybe you’ll make her nose run and help her out a bit.
No, you need a gun. Just getting even a small vehicle down the escalators will be a challenge, but steering it in a carriage well enough to flatten miscreants will be well nigh impossible.
This happens so frequently in the NY subway that I don’t even get pissed off about it any more. Some people just have a lack of understanding about how to live in the company of others. Another one is when people push you out of the way to get off at the next stop without even thinking that it’s possible that you may also be getting off at that stop. I’ve got better things to do than trying prevent you from getting out of the subway car. If we were to start a thread about mass transit pet peeves, we might break some post records.
True. But with New Yorkers (most of whom came from elsewhere anyway), that lack of understanding is something evolved. It’s almost Darwinian. Chalk it all up to that hot ball of existential angst (what the travel essays call “vibrant energy”) in the pit of the stomach, without which you do not and will never get New York.
OTOH, Montrealers doing these things are just plain uncouth.
The problem is that not enough people counter-attack the rudeness. I’ve experienced your example with exiting - few people can actually push me out of the way surreptitiously, however I’ve had a consistently rude lady on a sardine-packed bus give me the mean “Excuse me, I’m getting off.” as she tries to rise from her seat. Never mind that she says this as we approach the last stop on the line. She made the mistake of catching me one morning where I was half-awake (as opposed to my normal dead-to-the-world). I quite loudly proclaimed, “Everybody make a hole, this lady is getting off and wants to be first.” She hates me, but she no longer tries to cut in front of me entering or exiting a bus (how I wish we queued at bus stops like civilized people, but that is asking too much).
When I encounter the perfume-bathers, I do the same thing (mostly in elevators). “My god, what stinks? Jeez, who’s filtering Joe’s Bargain Scent through the showerhead? Wish I had remembered my gas mask.” Avoid eye contact with the offender, who will be boring holes into you with her eyes.
Another favorite of mine are the people who won’t let you exit a train. They’ll block the door, trying to push on. My informal survey indicates that Asian and Eastern European/Russian women do this mostly. Again, I’m a big guy, and I’m going to get off the train before you get on. I square my shoulders and exit, and I will force you to move for me.
Whilst riding the escalator: Walk left. Stand right.
It’s not that hard people! They even have little signs every ten or twenty feet along the escalator handrail to remind you of those simple principles. Evidently, those people are illiterate.
To the OP: Don’t get a car. At least with mass transit the morons are usually just nuisances. When people commute by car there’s a chance the moronic behavior of others can kill or injure you, or at least hold you up for 20 extra minutes because they’ve never seen someone changing a flat before.
In South Korea, the escalators have a neat little yellow line painted down the middle of the escalator steps to divide the fast lane (left side) from the standing lane (right side).
Preach it. I’ve gotten to the point where my main reason for wanting to leave NYC is the mass transit. How about when I’m standing there at 8:15 in the morning, tired, barely hanging on, and someone gets up from her seat about two minutes before we get to the next stop…and just stands there in front of it instad of offering it to any number of passengers who have a long rid and want to sit down? Why would anyone voluntarily get up out of her seat long before the train’s about to stop anyway? Being the first one off the car doesn’t give you more than a two-second advantage, if that…
And buses are SO MUCH WORSE. The pattern of riding buses around here is to stand as close to the front as possible so that each new rider has to squeeze past your giant ass to get to the huge empty space that is the back half of the train. And what does each new rider do? Stand as close to the front as possible. Repeat until the bus is so full that all new riders just squeeze past half the riders to stand somewhere in the middle with their crotches pressing against me.
I swear, one of these days I’m going to have a claustrophobic panic attack. I’m already more germophobic than I used to be, and I blame the gross things I’ve seen and experienced on NYC mass transit.
I only ride the DC metro like twice a year, but even I know that you cannot afford to wait politely for people to get off the train before you get on, or vice versa. There’s a very small window of opportunity, and when those doors close, they close . I’ve always understood it to be an accepted part of metro “culture” that you push your way on, and push your way off. It’s just how it’s done.
What I hate is that here in LA, the MTA actually removed the signs that once spelled that concept out so clearly. All it takes is one person standing on the left side to screw things up, and it inevitably will happen even when that individual can clearly see that everyone else is standing to the right.
I had some lady yell at me the other day when I was the second or third person to push past her since she was standing dead in the middle. “Oh, I’m sorry – I thought this was an escalator, not a raceway!” I didn’t even turn around. :rolleyes:
I’ve complained to the MTA about making this clearer, but they don’t seem to think it’s important and/or enforceable. sigh
Hmm, well that isn’t how it is done in Montreal (which is where both the OP and I are writing from). I take have taken the metro regularly my whole life, and I have never had the doors close before I could get on unless I was making a run for it and no one else was on the platform. Maybe in DC the door-opening system is automated, whereas it isn’t here?
The etiquette for nose-blowing on the subway is the same as that for any other place where you’re elbow-to-elbow with a bunch of other people: to the maximum extent possible, try to not make it everyone else’s problem. Use your kleenex, as quietly and with the minimum amount of sniffling and/or serious blowing you can manage.
If that ain’t enough to last you until you get home, then get off at the next station, find a relatively uncrowded corner to do your serious noseblowing, then get back on the next train going your way.
You may not get a seat when you get back on, but that’s life.