A moany chat for those who commute daily in busy cities.

[NCsoS]

This is lighthearted, hence not an AIBU as I am fully aware nobody is doing anything wrong and we all have a different pace in life. But this is a moany thread for those who do the same journey day in day out and to vent all those little things that in your rush hour stressed morning / afternoon really piss in your cornflakes.

I have a list 😂

I do the same journey twice a day - it’s autopilot at this point, everything is calculated on my route, even to the ticket barrier I use and the exact spot I stand in on the tube platform.

So here it goes:

• the obvious not keeping left
• getting off the escalator and immediately stopping just by the steps to tie your shoe laces / adjust your bag
• people walking in pairs or groups through stations joined at the hip - just let other people pass
• People with massive luggage on the escalators
• people stopping in the middle of a busy walkway as you’re walking at full pace behind them

I’m sure I have many more I’ll remember as we go along. Share yours!

I know I'm desperately unreasonable but non-commuters on commuter trains, specifically:
> Groups of middle aged and older couples on their way to a weekend away who treat the train - the commuter train - like an extension of their break, spreading their little Waitrose picnics all over the tables.
> Parents with children on busy commuter trains who treat their kids like precious Faberge eggs and get all worked up if their eggs kids can't sit down, get bumped, don't have space for 'snacks'

Also, men (usually commuters actually) who drink lager on the Friday evening trains home. Limp-dicked, pathetic, middle-management pricks in cheap Next suits and brown shoes.

Ah actually I really like seeing these groups full of fun and joie de vivre. Yes they might be a bit irritating due to numbers, but they tend to be quite well behaved.
I also find it amusing watching their teachers who look EXHAUSTED and spend the entire journey counting them after every stop!!

OR football fans in large numbers chanting, stinking of booze, laughing to high heavens.
Yes you’ve had a great day out and you had fun. But I’ve just done a 9h shift and really couldn’t care less about your team winning or losing or what an amazing time you’ve had. Let me get home to my bed.

Based in Manchester:

People body-blocking the tap-in machines and then searching for their phones/cards

People who get on during rush hour and stand right by the doors without even trying to move down the carriage.

People who push on when there is barely any room and cause a big fuss when the doors can't close properly around their huge bags. I know we're all trying to get somewhere, but the next tram is in two minutes and sometimes you just need to wait.

People who listen to music without headphones either on the tram or walking down the road. Just don't!

Chuggers. Just always and in every situation, I hate the chuggers.

Ugh I used to live on the Jubilee line and when there was something on at Wembley this was the worst. Huge groups of lairy drunk men. I was a lot younger then and once or twice was a target for "oi love, why aren't you smiling" and shit like that while I was crawling home exhausted working 80 hour weeks as a junior lawyer.

Ive had many sardine type commutes with those men who had absolutely no shame in having their private against me instead of tilting their body slightly

Yes this! So rude!

Also people who cram onto trains in rush hour with several huge suitscases and completely block the aisle, so that no-one can move and alighting becomes an issue.

Waterloo station. What an absolute shitshow on all levels. Packed with both commuters and tourists/dawdlers, escalators perpetually broken and the absolute worst, when trains are severely delayed and they casually lock everyone out of the station.

What I hate about Waterloo is how far away platform 20-24 is. I often arrive the other end and have to leg it across the concourse from one side to the other. It’s like a version of It’s a Knockout trying to do that. Tourists, people with wheely suitcases that you can’t see and trip over, small children, dogs, other commuters going as fast as you can. I often feel I’ve got 2 jobs. 1 job is my actual job and the other job is getting there and back!

Stinky food. I get a very early train, there is a woman who insists on eating 2 hard boiled eggs. Boak.

Similar, noisy eaters.

Make up appliers - putting on more make up than they have face and the endless rustling around in a big make up bag. Why on Earth would you carry that around? And if they are sitting next to me and brushing their hair….

Men who speak on phone or to a travelling companion whose every other word is fucking. I feel so embarrassed for them. Not against swearing just the fact they use it as a filler word.

The playing of calls, videos etc on speaker - it’s now all ages, types.

Nose pickers. Or those who make that hawking sound.

People who rush for the same seat every journey, not adverse to using their elbows to beat you to it, or who get affronted who don’t get that seat.

Seat hoggers using bags.

The lecherous men working on the barriers at a London railway station. I am close to reporting. They make me feel very uncomfortable.

Bags on seats.
Smelly food.
Smelly armpits. Smelly anything
People who take up their seat and half the one next to them, not surprisingly it’s the only one free.
People begging.
No queue etiquette. Lots of people standing around the bus stop then a scrum when it arrives. I used to politely wait, now I’ll head the scrum.
Standing in the bus aisles with seats free but not accommodating people wishing to access those seats.
Sleepers, snorers and dribblers on any transport.

Don't forget it's not just tourists who have to travel occasionally and/or with luggage in rush hour. People who are traveling long distance and need to travel early to make a connection, people working away from home, people attending hospital appointments. All of whom might be travelling in unfamiliar surroundings, maybe with (shock horror) luggage, maybe with new and unfamiliar physical challenges.

The 7.47? You don’t go in to Waterloo do you? If so we are train sharers 😂

Don’t forget that they’ll tell you to go to train 5, then 8, oh no it’s 11 now, now 7. Within an hour of delays then they’ll charge you £54 that you have to clam back because they kept making you go in and out of different bloody barriers.

Don’t forget that they’ll tell you to go to train 5, then 8, oh no it’s 11 now, now 7. Within an hour of delays then they’ll charge you £54 that you have to clam back because they kept making you go in and out of different bloody barriers.

If you walk at a GLACIAL PACE while studying your phone and weaving across the path then you’re a menace. As are the cyclists who don’t stop at red lights and zoom through crowds of pedestrians!

I dread to think how many days of my life I spend waiting for hundreds of lights to change between Liverpool Street and Holborn

After a horrible experience on the bus, I told teenage dd to do exactly this. Fair enough if there isn’t anywhere else to sit but when there are plenty of seats I’ve told dd not to move her bag so that some creepy bastard can sit next to her rubbing his body up and down hers.

Oh and yes to those with dogs. If you insist on carting your animal around with you then keep it off the seats. Also keep it on a tight lead, not those stupidly long leads which are a menace to other people.

My biggest gripes are:

people who use a seat for their bag then act completely put out when you ask them to move it

Manspreading - utterly unacceptable

People having conversations on speakerphone or playing music on speakerphone

100% hence why in my opening post I said they’re doing nothing wrong 😊

yep, food is another one. I get people are probably starving after work / have a long journey but some of those M&S pasta salad smells mixed in with bodies and whatever else in the air makes me want to vom.

or people who chomp on their crisps like they’ve not eaten for 5 years. The ones where even my noise cancelling headphones can’t drown

On my commute at home time I have noticed women do the eating (crisps, chocolate), men drink alcohol out of cans. Only bothers me if it stinks or they eat or slurp.

If I leave work earlier it’s the men doing the eating - normally smelly noodle or burger type food.

Whilst I haven’t done a survey, just my observations. I people watch!

Added to the smelly food bastards, I hate people who order and/or drink coffee on the train. Incredibly unreasonable I know.

I absolutely despise the smell of burnt bitter bean water coffee and I can't help but imagine the thick coffee breath clouds being pumped into an already-busy train afterwards. I'm also quite judgemental about it - I think it shows a weakness of character that people can't go a whole train journey without coffee.

Sorry 😬

I come into and out of Canary Wharf and although staring down the escalators at the ginormous queues at the end of the day is horrifying, I love the organisation.

What is not ok is if someone walks to the front of that queue, or sort of waits standing next to you rather than behind so they then push on first.

Plus people with giant backpacks who turn around or bump against you for the whole journey should be banned from public transport.

Ohhhh no sorry I cannot break up my morning routine of buying coffee before I jump on the train sorry!