Diary of an ex-banker: What behaviour most annoys you on public transport?
One of the joys of leaving my job in investment banking was waving goodbye to my daily commute.
However, these days I have frequent meetings with my co-Founder, Georgia, our app designer and developers and a legion of other people. So I probably spend more time travelling than before. But I know I’m lucky as generally I make my journeys outside of the rush hour or at least am going against the traffic.
Nevertheless, I do occasionally suffer the woes of daily commuters. In recent weeks I’ve been delayed by signal failure, congestion ‘in the Waterloo area’, an earlier broken down train, a person on the track and, most recently, a lorry hitting a bridge (no more trains until bridge inspected and deemed safe).
Then, of course, there are other people.
Last week I was on a virtually empty train to Richmond when I was overwhelmed by a sudden pungent smell that made me feel quite ill. My first instinct was to find the guard and alert him/her to a possible fault on the train. Perhaps something to do with the brakes? Or a broken toilet? Luckily, before raising the alarm, I looked over my shoulder at the seat behind me and saw a young woman painting her fingernails. This was the source of the unpleasant smell. Naturally, being British, I said nothing and simply moved to the other end of the carriage out of range.
But this did make me think about what annoys me most on public transport. My number one irritation is probably people talking loudly on their phones. Although, after the recent heatwave, poor personal hygiene must be a close second!
Looking at various polls the number one annoyance for most of us seems to be people trying to get on to a bus/train without first giving passengers a chance to get off. But not too far behind is refusing to give up a seat to a pregnant/elderly/disabled person or person with young children.
This made me smile as over the years I’ve offered my seat a fair number of times, although it can be awkward when the offer is declined! But only once has someone actually asked for my seat. Unfortunately, on that occasion, I’d twisted my ankle the night before when out running. At the time I used to cycle to work but my ankle made this impossible. So I decided to try public transport and had painfully limped to a bus stop close to my flat. By the time I reached the stop I’d already realised what a stupid idea it was, but by then I was committed…and didn’t relish the limp back home. So I boarded a bus and was grateful that there was an empty seat. Unfortunately for me, at the very next stop, a heavily pregnant lady got on and immediately asked for my seat. I have to be honest, in my mind I was playing a game of top trumps. Did a twisted ankle trump a pregnant lady? But it seemed churlish to argue, so I dutifully gave up my place and stood for the rest of the journey.
But, getting back to the young woman painting her nails, was I right to be annoyed? Or am I just a snowflake? Was I being unreasonably sensitive and was her behaviour perfectly acceptable?
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Originally published at jsixq.com on July 3, 2018.
