Yes, this is the Morgan mentioned throughout this blog. She left this as a comment on my previous entry, and I disagree that it's a 'pointless comment', it's really not. I'd refer to it, instead, as good solid empirical evidence. Next time you hear someone explain their rude pushing and shoving with the excuse "I'm in a rush", this is just another item to add to the lists of responses:
"Why are you in a rush?" Did you oversleep or get lost on the underground and realise you're now going to be late to work? Don't get me wrong, I've been guilty of both of these, but it's no excuse to be rude. Your personal time management failings are your own. Take some responsibility, accept that you need to manage your time better, rather than elbowing other commuters in the face as you press onto the train.
"I need to catch this train!" This one in absolute particular? Do you have some kind of pacemaker that will stop working unless you plug it into a device being held on this train alone? As Morgan had just pointed out (and I've witnessed to when I've gotten off a train and sat down to sort my laces), 60 seconds may sound like a long time, but it's really not. It's actually the difference between walking 500 yards or lightly jogging them. Again, if time management is an issue, see the previous point.
"I'm late for work!" See the first point. Accept the consequences and see to correct it for future journeys. Yeah, you're gonna have a crap start to your day, but it's no reason to ruin everyone else's too.
"I was here first!" Oh please, this is England, birthplace of the queue (or 'waiting line' for any US readers), and nobody queues for public transport. Everyone knows that when those doors open it's a free for all.
I'm kidding, this is actually one of my pet peeves. Someone jumps line at the supermarket, everyone says something and it's dealt with - those affected just go to counseling for a few weeks to deal with the trauma of the perfect order of a queue being broken (I think the only other situation that causes such trauma is putting the milk into the tea before the water).
That being said, if you and I are both stood on the edge of the platform and the door happens to stop right in front of me, my perfect guesswork is not the same as queue jumping. You pushing your briefcase through my shoulder to get on the train before me, however, is.
Genuinely, in my head, this all just stems from a mentality of "My problems are more important than yours", or - boiled down further - "I'm more important than you".
It's a sad state that a pregnant woman is often not offered a seat (but having mistakenly offered a seat to a woman who was just fat, I understand that it's not always easy to get right, and that's a mistake in always conscious of making again...), that single mums with pushchairs believe they have more rights to the wheelchair areas than the people in wheelchairs.
I once witnessed a little old lady with a Zimmer frame shuffle onto a train at Clapham Junction, the frame laden with shopping and her clearly having difficulty walking. I'd moved aside to let her onto the carriage proper where there is a row of seats along each wall facing inwards. I assumed someone there would surely give up their seat.
After what seemed like an eternity of her glancing around the people seated (most of whom had buried their noses further into books/phones/tablets/laptops to try and pretend that they hadn't seen her) I was proven right. Someone did offer their seat for this elderly lady - a young lad, probably about twelve years old, with crutches.
Now, for a moment, my heart swelled that this kid had given up his seat, but as he hobbled to his feet and grabbed his crutches, that warmth turned sour. This was wrong. Here were a dozen healthy people pretending not to notice two people in need of a seat. Each of them was waiting for someone else to do the right thing, which if course, meant nobody was.
I snapped and spoke out, addressing the carriage and asking why a young lad with crutches was giving up his seat for this lady when there were plenty of other able bodied people pretending to not notice. The lad hovered over his seat unsure of what to do. A few moments of awkward silence passed before one gentleman (late 20s at a guess, in a suit), closed down his laptop with one of the loudest sighs I have ever heard, stowed it in his bag and stood up to offer the old lady his seat, glaring daggers at me.
If I broke protocol here, I'm not sorry for it. I'm not perfect - far from it. There are many people I could have helped that I haven't, for whatever reason. But there are some situations that are so obvious, so painfully simple, and this was one of them. I'm not sorry that I interrupted whatever super-de-duper important work that guy was doing (I'm giving the benefit if the doubt that he wasn't just on Facebook or watching a film) to ensure that this woman got a seat not at the expense of some lad on crutches.
I'd hope you'd do the same, right? I can't help but imagine that that is all it would take. If people could take a few brief seconds to evaluate life and realise that it's not all about them, that there are other people around them too - living, breathing people with needs, emotions and lives too - then maybe we could all just be a little more courteous. I'm not suggesting we all bend over backwards for each other, but just a few gestures of common courtesy here and there would do.
Why do we need a 'Good Deed Feed' in the Metro that essentially just thanks people for doing the right thing? This is England, a country once parodied for being overly polite. I feel we're losing something decidedly British, and I'm worried what the world will think when they realise that's not who we are anymore...
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