Rude Bus Passengers

I love public transportation. I think it should be more common and more widely used in this country. It's better for the environment, it's better for the traffic situation, it's better use of limited resources (be it oil, parking, or space on a crowded road). I take the bus to and from school every day. If I end up working downtown this summer, I’ll take the bus. I’m also a fan of carpooling, which is a whole different page of this story.

But I hate some of the people who take public transportation.

There's the smelly person. Sometimes it's BO. Possibly a person from a culture where standards of personal hygiene are different than here in the US. Possibly a person who is too lazy to bathe. Others smell so nauseatingly of alcohol that your stomach turns (Yeah, lady who sat next to me this morning, I’m talking to you!). This was more common when I took the late night bus to the near suburbs last year, but occasionally happens if I take the evening express bus now. On a few memorable occasion, it's happened on my morning commute in to school. Once the guy was dressed in a neat suit and tie and carrying a briefcase, but smelled soooo strongly of beer that I can't imagine anyone in his office was fooled for a second.

Then there’s the person who doesn’t seem to understand the one-seat-per-person rule. There are the people who think they need a separate seat for their backpack. Most of them will move their belongings onto their laps if challenged. Then there are the people who sit on the bench seats at the back of the bus and position themselves so that they are taking up 1½ seats, thus preventing anyone from making use of the 2nd seat. These people tend to be the most intractable. They’ll pretend like they don’t know that you want to sit down or act as though they can’t see the delineation between the seats that should tell them to scoot over. Then there are people—almost always young black men—who sit with their legs splayed out so that, while their butts and upper bodies are entirely in the zone of one seat, their legs are so far into the neighboring zone that they might as well be laying across both seats. If you sit in the seat next to them, they’ll typically move their legs a fraction of an inch closer together. One must resort to passive-aggressive techniques, such as the “oops, the bus made a fast turn, so sorry I ended up on your side of the seat” or the “shoving the backpack on the floor by ‘accidentally’ bumping the errant leg”. A direct request to scoot over usually results in a cursing and nasty look, but seldom an actual scoot.

Then there are the people (almost always teenagers and younger adults, usually female) who sit in the front seats and develop situational blindness that prevents them from seeing the pregnant woman, the elderly man, or the person on crutches that boards the bus and can’t get a seat. This class of bus rider has reduced me to a frothing righteous anger on more than one occasion, including one day that found me standing up from my seat a little more than halfway back in the bus to announce that since all of the other able-bodied young women at the front of the bus had apparently been raised by wolves, that the gentleman (white haired and at least 70 years old) could have my seat—and I punctuated the announcement with a withering “Shame on you!”. Not that I have any delusions that I might have changed their behavior, but sometimes I just can’t stand the inconsiderate habits of my fellow man. The flip side of this are the passengers, usually professional-looking white men, who seem to think that they deserve a seat and will try to intimidate someone into getting up.

Also fun are the people who shove their way to the front of the line to get on the bus. Civility is dead, my friends, at least at the bus door. And conversely, there are the people who get on, find that there are no open seats on the bus, and plant their carcass right in the middle of the aisle at the front of the bus instead of moving as far back in the bus as possible—you know, to allow the people at subsequent stops to get on the bus. Then, even when the bus driver yells back for people to move to the back of the bus, they just look around and don’t move at all. Why should they worry about any of the other people?

Of course there are the cell phone talkers. I’m not talking about someone who answers a call and quickly and quietly takes care of business or tells the caller they’ll call back later. Nor am I talking about someone who makes a quick and quiet call along the lines of “I’m on my way now” or “Do you need me to stop and pick up milk on my way?”. I’m talking about the loud morons. Yes, that means you, Mr. “I Just Got Out of Rehab”, and you too, “Ms. He-Got-Scabs-On-His-You-Know-What-But-I’m-Sleeping-With-Him-Anyway” (and I only wish I had just made that up). I’m going to let all of you in on a little secret: your cellphone doesn’t generate a soundproof bubble to surround you and your conversation. I CAN HEAR YOU!! I’m also talking to all of you who have very loud and obnoxious ringtone and bury your phone at the bottom of your purse or bag so that we’re all treated to a good long listen to your retarded ringtone.

Similarly annoying are the people who get on the bus with their children and let them scream and yell and act like hooligans. No, it’s not cute.

And then there’s the man who was so nasty and rude that he deserves his own entry into this impromptu Hall of Infamy. When I catch the bus home at 4pm, I almost never get a seat. This bus tends to get so crowded that it has to stop taking passengers because you quite literally cannot fit anyone else into the bus. I get off three stops from the end and usually get to sit down two stops before that. I try to avoid taking the bus around this time of the day because my book bag and laptop case are so heavy that I get strained across the shoulder if I have to stand in the bus most of the way home, but sometimes it just can’t be helped. Anyway, this particular day, I had a young man offer me his seat so that I wouldn’t have to stand with the bags (which were even heavier than normal). At the next stop, quite a few people got off, including the person sitting next to me. Hanging to the bar in front of me was a woman in her 40s. She started to shift her bags to the side so that she could sit in the newly vacated seat next to me, but before she could take the two steps across the aisle and bend her knees, she was elbowed out of the way by a man about her age. He plopped down next to me and didn’t even hace the grace to loop sheepish about shoving the poor woman aside. I was so stunned that I couldn’t even speak for a moment. Another passenger stood up and gave the woman his seat before I could respond. Meanwhile, the shover had pulled out a pocket Bible and started reading—Hey! Way to live a Christ-like life there, jackass! And he was very smelly on top of it. His coat was crusted in dirt and he smelled like he hadn’t seen a shower or a bar of soap in a week. THEN he spread his legs out so that they encroached on my space (my heavy bag “slipped” an whacked him in the leg a few minutes later). All in all, he made me want to scream “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?” at the top of my lungs.

Seriously, why can’t people enter and exit the bus in an orderly manner and just sit down and be considerate of the other people who are just trying to get from one point to another? Is it really that hard?