Another view: the problem with underground etiquette

4 September 2017

It’s rush-hour and I’m standing on a packed Tube train, like a sweaty sardine, looking at the Young Couple sitting next to the seats reserved “for people who are disabled, pregnant or less able to stand.” They’re not disabled or pregnant and they’re not sitting in those seats themselves. Their luggage is.

They’ve wedged two enormous rucksacks into those seats, which have a big blue sign stuck on the window right above them explaining exactly who those seats are reserved for. I’m waiting for somebody to say something, preferably something beginning with the full version of the acronym “FFS”, followed by an instruction to move their f***ing bags from the f***ing seats and offer their own f***ing seats to someone else. But of course it doesn’t happen. Everyone just stands there, silently seething disapproval in their direction. One or two people shake their heads sadly. One or two others give a bit of an eye-roll. Some do that ‘knowing look’ to one another to show that we share our disdain.

Another one – my friend Simon, because this isn’t actually me witnessing this; it happened to him earlier this week – gets out his phone and takes their photograph.

The young couple just stare back implacably and impassively. The girl, who looks fit and healthy and in her early 20s, almost looks as if she’s going to smile for the camera. She could be on holiday, visiting London for the first time with her boyfriend. She doesn’t look as if it’s ever crossed her mind to offer up her seat, or her rucksack’s seat, for someone else who might need it more than her. Perhaps she comes from a country where nobody has ever done that, if such countries exist.

Her giant rucksack, and her boyfriend’s giant rucksack, just sit there, in their Priority Seat, doing nothing. Simon, in common with everybody else in the packed carriage, does nothing either. He is not a confrontational guy – I play cricket with him and he is more likely to apologise for dropping a catch than swear and kick a hole in the pitch in fury like some of his team-mates - so I would have been surprised if he had intervened. He says he was on the verge of doing something, saying something, when the train stopped at a station and a whole new batch of passengers squeezed in, pushing him further away from the Young Couple. I imagine he was glad the potential for confrontation had receded.

Meet the Tube lines as people

1/11

There is, sadly, nothing new or surprising about this scene. It’s played out every single day on Tubes, trains and buses. My friend Carina was once standing in another crowded carriage on a summer’s day, eight and a half months pregnant, when she began to feel dizzy in the stifling heat. Worried that she might collapse, she asked the lady in the Priority Seat next to her if she wouldn’t mind letting her sit there instead. “Why should I?” the woman asked aggressively. “Because I’m pregnant?” suggested Carina, “and because I’m asking you politely?” “How do I know you’re pregnant?” the sitting woman responded angrily, without moving. “You could just be fat.”

And of course nobody did anything to support Carina, even though they’d heard the whole exchange and no doubt sympathised entirely. You know what we’re like: English people, being English, doing nothing about it except tutting quietly to ourselves, shrugging helplessly at fellow onlookers, and posting social media updates about it afterwards. At that point we finally come out of their shells, cocooned behind our laptops and phones, and say all the things we should have said at the time, but didn’t. That’s what Simon did, and I noted an interesting thing about the replies.

While most were content to share his silent grumble, it was left to a fellow who has spent the last quarter-century of his life living in New York, Las Vegas and Texas, and thus forgotten his native etiquette, to voice what so many others had merely thought, saying he would have issued the instruction to "Move that f***ing s**t!" (but without the asterisks).But he wasn’t there. So it will carry on, ad infinitum, as will all the other things that annoy Londoners about the Tube – most of which we don’t do anything about.

The reason Simon’s experience caught my eye was because it took place on the very day that a new survey asked Londoners what most annoyed them on the Underground. And refusing to give up a seat for someone elderly, disabled or pregnant only came seventh, while placing bags on a seat was eighth. So what winds us up the most? People getting on before letting people off, obviously – the English love a queue and have no time for queue-bargers. So we’re more concerned about something that’s simply not polite than we are by something that causes massive inconvenience. Which is so very typical of us.

You want to know what else annoys us on the Tube? Numbers two and three are variations on the number one – “not getting out of the way of others trying to get off” and “pushing ahead of you while getting on”. People don’t just have to queue; it’s important to queue properly.

10 amazing facts you may not know about the Piccadilly line

1/10

Oddly, my own biggest Tube annoyance – people eating smelly hot food in the carriage – was way down at number 11, behind such comparatively mild offences as manspreading (a bugbear for women, but usually easy to fix, for men at least, with a sharp glance or a braced thigh), leaving litter, and not moving down the carriage. I just can’t see how they compare to the time a man opposite me got out a plate, and a knife and a fork, and transferred the contents of a bag on to his plate and started eating his hot meal without a care in the world, while all I could think about was the stink, and the fact that the place he bought the food must have had some seats, and why the f*** didn’t he eat it there instead. But of course I said nothing, though I did change carriages at the next stop.

I decided to look up older surveys to see if attitudes have changed much and was interested to find that in a previous one in 2014 people were less concerned about etiquette and more worried about personal comfort. Smelliness and germ spreading were by far the biggest complaint. The number one gripe was poor hygiene from smelly passengers sitting or standing next to you, followed closely by people who cough or sneeze in your direction, without covering their mouth. I can sympathise: not long ago I was on a night bus in Dalston where a man swaying from side to side was eating a vile-smelling kebab and picking up chips in his fingers – then using the same greasy hand to hold the pole that we all have to use when we get off. On that occasion I too silently seethed: there’s not much point in confronting a drunk bloke at 2am at the best of times, least of all when the damage has already been done.

But really they’re all just symptoms of the same thing, aren’t they: in 21st century London people are increasingly self-absorbed, and have less and less consideration for the feelings of anyone apart from themselves. Eating and drinking, playing music, talking on the phone, having inappropriate conversations in front of children, pushing and shoving to get what you want... it’s all part of the society we live in today. It’s just ironic that we also live in a time when people are quicker than ever to take offence at perceived insults and slights, while ignoring all the offensive behaviour right under their noses.

I can’t help thinking that if we spent less time sealing ourselves off from everything and everyone around us, our eyes glued to our phones and headphones plugged into our ears, with more awareness of our surroundings, we would be more relaxed. So, while I am resigned to the idea that most Londoners don’t like talking to strangers, it was doubly depressing to read that more than half of us (55 per cent) “feel angry” when someone strikes up a conversation with us on the Tube.

That’s something to remember next time you’re asking for directions.

MORE ABOUT

Transport

London Underground

Another view: the problem with underground etiquette

Meet the Tube lines as people

Read More

10 amazing facts you may not know about the Piccadilly line