A recent survey shows these are the most annoying traits observed by people riding MRT and local comuter trains:
How people sit in their seats - 24.8%
People sitting with their legs spread too wide
Young or healthy people sitting in special seats for the aged and infirm
People not squeezing together enough in seats during rush hour so more can sit
Using cell phones - 19.9%
Speaking on a cell phone in a loud voice
Loud ring tones
Behavior when getting on the train - 8.6%
People who ignore others waiting for the train and board ahead of everyone else
Not waiting for people to get off before boarding
General noisy behavior - 7.0%
people acting loud and rowdily
Parents who don
It’s obviously not a Japanese public transport survey, either, because the #1 complaint would be sexual assault. I guess that happens here a bit, too, just not as much.
I hate people that get on one car and then walk the length of the train while it’s running. Why do you have to bother people like that? Can’t you stay still, dumbass?
Jees, just yesterday I had to take a seat beside a really pretty young girl and as she had her hand over the hump between seats (so that it was resting on my side) I practically sat on it. She still diddn’t move, instead keeping it just ever so slightly touching the side of my leg.
Another time a pretty girl across from me who wouldn’t uncross her legs when I sat down. Her toes rested against my shin the whole time we rode back to Muzha. And she had the audacity to keep looking at me in the eyes too as if I was supposed to like this.
I tell ya, more of these incidents and I’m really going to blow up on the MRT.
I bet it doesn’t even occur to parents to teach their children not to exhibit this kind of behavior. It isn’t natural to be considerate, you have to have your eyes opened on things like this.
I’m guilty of leaving my backpack on when there aren’t may people on the train, though.
[quote=“puiwaihin”]I bet it doesn’t even occur to parents to teach their children not to exhibit this kind of behavior. It isn’t natural to be considerate, you have to have your eyes opened on things like this.
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Chinese culture likes to raise introverts afraid of looking at what’s in front of them.
There enough room, I go stand in the back. I just want to read the damn newspaper, but someone stands in front of me and then backs up so I have no room to open the paper up. How rude! And then they don’t take a hint when the paper is digging into their backs.
Has anybody actually ever seen anybody obey those arrows on the ground, telling those alighting to go up the middle and those boarding to enter on the sides?
I mean, I don’t take the MRT every day, but I’ve like never NOT been almost flattened by the multi-directional on-rush when the train stops.
Maybe if the rule was, “EVERYONE FOR HIMSELF”, all the people would get on all organized-like just to disobey the rules . . .
I’d say the worst is people who clip their nails on the trains. I don’t mind them putting on makeup or fixing their hair or walking around…those are fine, but the thought of little pieces of nail flying randomly through the car makes me cringe.
Also, I don’t really get a kick out of having to literally shove my way out of the car as people try to push their way inside before anyone’s gotten off, but I often find it necessary to do so, especially at Taipei Main Station.
I somehow doubt this is a Taipei survey, though. Maybe Hong Kong, because all the seats on the MRT cars are defined as two-person seats; nobody can “sit closer together so more people can sit down”. That means they’re talking about row seating like Hong Kong’s MTR.
The most embarassing thing happened to me on the MRT. I had a heavy backpack on, so I put my back against the wall to allow the backpack to slide down after I took my arms out. But as it slid down the buckle caught my pants and I dacked myself in front of a carriage full of people. I was then forced to pull my pants back up in front of everyone!
But strangely no-one laughed. I think anywhere else in the world people would be laughing all the way to work!
People who put up strings between the poles and dry their washing, and you have to sit with other people’s damp underwear dangling in your face. That is so annoying.
Well, we also know it’s not a NYC subway survey:
[quote]1. Subway cars have gotten dirtier in the last year. In 1998, we found that 73% of cars are dirty or heavily dirty. This compares to our 1997 survey, released last April, in which we found that 68% of cars were dirty or heavily dirty. The worsening trend is statistically significant.
Far too many subway cars in the New York City Transit fleet are filthy. Our surveyors found that almost three in four cars (73%) earned a rating of either a “heavily dirty” or “dirty” level of filth. Nearly half (47%) of the cars warranted what we call a “heavily dirty” rating. See Graph 1.
Ninety percent of subway cars that we rated as having “dirty” or “heavily dirty” conditions earned that rating because of unwashed floors or seats.
Only about 10% earned these poor ratings because of food waste, cans or bottles on the floors or seats.
[quote]An analysis by The New York Times shows that there have been about 760 service changes, including station closings, so far this year, and reveals that no weekend has been immune. The least troublesome weekend was March 12-13, which had two diversions scheduled. The most inconvenient was Oct. 8-9, when 33 diversions were scheduled. The N line had experienced the most diversions - at least 72, or nearly 10 percent of the total. It was followed by the D, with 63 diversions.
In nearly 100 instances, riders were instructed to take shuttle buses when their normal trains were canceled.
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Hmmm. That makes it curiouser. If that is a survey of Japanese trains, a place where getting groped by perverts is a daily occurrence for nearly all women, it’s very surprising it’s not at the top of the annoyances list. Perhaps that complaint was deliberately left off the list.
My only complaint is that the first people getting on the train never “fill in”. They just stop at the doors as if there weren’t any other people trying to get on. Oh and another one is about the people who seem to not quite understand what “standing in line and waiting your turn” means
Today, in Taipei Main station, I was getting off one train during rush hour in a throng of hundreds of people all moving toward the nearest escalator. The sort of swarm that you just let pass for 30 seconds or so. But, an old battletank of a woman, dragging two elementary school kids, plows her way through the crowd, knocking many people out of the way, just to get on that exact train before it left. After I gained control of the instinctual “slap upside the head” reflex, my overriding thought was, “Nice way to raise your grandkids. Explains a lot.”
Chinese culture likes to raise introverts afraid of looking at what’s in front of them.