It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know that people don’t
like being crammed into small spaces. If we did, we’d hang out in phone booths,
sleep in bathtubs, and carpool in clown cars.
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| Oh, right. |
Well, if it were up to us riders, things would be a tad
roomier. Riding the train doesn’t have to be a miserable experience.
Considering how much the MTA wants to make us all rage-filled maniacs by 8:30
AM, commuters need to be there for each other and make the ride as painless as
possible.
Being a seasoned commuter, I know a few simple tricks to
help make my ride aboard Hell on Wheels a little more comfortable. And today,
I’m going to share some simple commuter etiquette with you, dear readers.
PRO TIP #1: Picking
your seat in a six-seater.
The six-seater is the group of seats that is usually
reserved for loud, chatty girls, loud, beer-swilling construction workers, and
loud, obnoxious “regulars” (groups of commuters who have become train-friends
and talk up their lives in great, personal detail that can be heard by everyone
aboard the train). But when it’s up for grabs, the first two people to sit in a
six-seater determine the comfort level of all who sit in it for the duration of
the train ride. A person’s natural reaction is to get as far the fuck away from
the other person in the six-seater, as possible, so usually this is what
happens when the first two people sit down:
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| I have mad Photoshop skillz. |
Well this is fine and dandy if you’re the only two who’ll be
sitting here, but it’s 6:00 PM and nobody wants to stand on their goddamn ride
home. So what happens when the next person sits down? This:
Now you have no goddamn legroom, as if you had any in the
six inches of space that exists between the two seats facing each other.
But what happens next? Oh good! Some tall schmuck with a
giant beer ruins the fun even further and intertwines his legs with the person
opposite him. Happens all the time.
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| Meister Brau?! Do they even make that anymore? |
Now watch what happens by having these people in the four
corner seats: in the eyes of a lady who doesn’t want to stand (they never do),
these four people have perfectly framed two open seats! One of them all for
her! This lady will usually have at least one bag that is bigger than her, and
most often she will have no less than three bags total. Overhead rack? Tsk,
tsk. That’s for peasants. Her bags will go on the empty seat, on her lap, on
your lap, my lap and in between you and her, my friend. 40% of the time she is
with a friend who will take the other free seat, and the six-seater is filled,
as it was intended. But ask any one of these people if they’re happy about it
and they’ll say no. Except maybe the lady with the bags, because she’d rather
die than stand. Seriously. You will never find a female standing on a rush hour
train. They will wedge themselves in between two sumo grand champions before
they spend an hour on their feet. TELL ME I’M WRONG.
But this could have been avoided. The first person needs to
sit in the one of the far seats. Once they are seated, the next person needs to
sit like this:
And then the next person sits like this:
If riders follow this protocol, no one will want to have to
climb over all of you to get to the free seats. The worst that will happen is
that only one person will sit in the free seat on the end. If that happens, a
little shifting of the body helps legs avoid collision and everyone’s pretty
much happy.
PRO TIP #2: Picking
your seatmate.
Your best bet is a three-seater. Once two people are on
opposite ends of that, almost no one will ask to sit in the middle.
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| Except maybe her. |
If you’re a big guy or gal, go for a three-seater with
someone of equal or larger size, further minimizing the amount of room for
someone to squeeze into.
When the three-seaters are full, you’re relegated to the
two-seaters. I hate when someone sits next to me in a two-seater. Not because I
mind the company, but because I’m not the smallest guy there ever was. So when
someone wedges in beside me, it’s instant misery. I try to send body language
that I don’t want company (looking surly is my forte), but somehow I must be
sending out invisible beacons of sunshine and rainbows, because every
motherfucker always wants to sit next to me!
Reading body language isn’t an especially difficult task.
Especially when the person trying to convey their feelings is throwing their
emotions in your face like the ham that hit Paula Deen.
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| Quite possibly the funniest thing ever. |
You don’t want to sit next to someone who hates your guts
for an hour and a half. Your very existence has pissed them off and now they’re
going to bump and nudge you every chance they get for the duration of the ride.
Not that I’ve ever done that. Ahem. So if you ask to sit next to someone and
they roll their eyes and sigh heavily, move along to the seat next to the tiny
Asian girl who only takes up half a seat and is already asleep.
PRO TIP #3: No
assigned seating
This one is for the everyday commuters. I hate to break it
to you, but there’s no assigned seating. You’re not a feral dog. Once you
“claim” a seat, it doesn’t mean it’s yours tomorrow.
Some people will scratch and claw to get their favorite
seat, and if it’s not free, holy shit, step back because shit’s about to go
thermonuclear.
I understand that if
someone gets usual my seat before me, it’s time to pick a new one. I like to
get a seat that has an electrical outlet for my laptop (for those who don’t know,
some seats have hidden Edison outlets good for powering your gadgets), but if I
can’t, tough titty on me.
I like to sit at the very end of a car with my back to a
wall. I watch movies on my computer, and most of them tend to have a lot of
blood and boobies, so I try not to sit out in the open and feel incredibly
awkward during a gratuitous shower scene or when Leatherface saws someone in
half.
So one morning a non-regular girl got to my usual seat
before me. No biggie, I take the one across the aisle. That’s when I hear, “Uh
oh. Not good.” The two middle-aged ladies who normally sit in the seat I took
start freaking the fuck out. They proceeded to spend the ENTIRE ride
complaining about how their seat was taken (they clearly wanted me to hear) and
how unfair it was. Hate to break it to you, ladies, but fairness doesn’t exist
on public transportation. At the end of the ride one of them said, “I don’t
know why this makes me so angry, but it does!” I’ll tell you why: man’s primal
nature is to be a territorial piece of shit, and you clearly can’t keep your
cavewoman instincts in check. But this is a good first step. You’ve identified
that you have a problem for no good reason. Now let it go, shut the fuck up and
let me watch invisible Kevin Bacon commit rape and murder in peace.
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| Quality AM viewing material. |
