Bus Etiquette
... or more to the point: general etiquette; or perhaps a better description would be 'general good manners'. Call it what you will, there seems to be a distinct lack of it around these days - no more so than on the 222 bus route from Uxbridge Station to West Drayton, a service I take every week without fail, laden down with shopping bags from my weekly trip to Sainsburys.
Now what normally happens is this: I arrive to find a bus on stand waiting for its time to depart. Fair enough. I then sit down at the bus shelter right infront of the bus waiting for the doors to open and my being the first in line to get onto the bus. I like being first onto the bus - it means I can sit in that seat in the back right corner where there is extra leg room so I can sit without my bags taking up any extra space and so I'm not in the way of the millions of pensioners and single-mums that populate the other 95% of the bus. It's not much to ask really, being able to sit out of the way, causing minimal inconveinience to other people. But no, this rarely happens. What normally happens is this: I sit first in line to get onto the bus and then when the doors open, a whole queue of people have miraculously appeared from the other side of the advertising boarding to push onto the bus first. There is always without fail among this number some dirty chav with his music blaring who pushes on board and sits in the seat I've been waiting for patiently all this time. The following bus journey is then, rather awkward. For one, I can't stand in the pushchair space with my shopping (as I am perfectly happy doing) as there is always without fail at least one (normally two) buggie(s) that gets on board at the second stop so I am forced to stand in the way of the opening doors opposite. Neither am I able to sit near the front in the luggage space as this is where all the pensioners sit. I try then to sit somewhere at the back, as near to the door as possible so I can make my escape quickly. The problem is of course that I often find myself taking up more than one seat as busses provide little in the way of leg room for one as tall as me who has two large bags and a backpack on. I do then, squeeze myself in as best I can with bags on lap etc but still I feel like a nuisance as I know people can't really sit next to me properly. To me, this feeling of not wanting to inconveinience other people seems a perfectly normal thing to feel - I am after all respectful to people, I let people onto busses first if they were before me: - indeed I normally stand for the entire journey (when without shopping) so that others may sit - even people that really could do with standing up!
Why is it then that people are just so generally disrespectful or uncaring? I've lost count of the amount of times I've had to put up with stupidly loud music on the bus, or kids (yes KIDS - I'm talking 10-12 years old) swearing at passers-by out of the winder and dropping their litter everywhere. And it's not even just the chavs that are disrespectful these days - old people are too! It seems to me a common misconception that all young people cause trouble and are rude and that all old people are respectful and so deserve respect in turn. To me, people of any age should receive respect if they deserve it. People in the Uxbridge area just don't seem to have any, that's the thing. Many old people seem to treat bus journeys as a battle, and many middle-aged people ignore those in more urgent need of a seat than themselves. And the amount of chavvy single mums who fill every available bus seat with their vertiable managerie of children (who don't pay for seats!) and don't get them to move up when a poor old lady gets on and needs to sit down just makes me SEETHE with anger sometimes!
I live in hope that one day I might have a nice, peaceful bus journey home from Sainsburys on a Wednesday. I doubt it will ever happen though, don't you?