Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Manners Police on Patrol

I've become a menace on the subway.

For some reason, I just snapped this week and got fed up with everyone trying to push their way past me just so they can get to the subway door before me. I've taken to saying quite loudly, "Excuse you" on the trains and...well...gotten a little more personal with them.

Case in point -- While pulling into my train station so I could transfer to my line home, I turned to face the door and waited, along with everyone else for the train to stop and the doors to open. This woman decides that she needs to bump her way past everyone so she's closest to the door. When she didn't respond to my first "excuse you" remark, I walked up to her, tapped her on the shoulder and said, "You should have said, 'Excuse me.' I would have let you by."

Stunned the woman looked and me said, "I'm sorry."

My response: "That's something else you could have said but didn't."

To say it was liberating to actually say something like that and make the person aware that what they did wasn't cool or appreciated and maybe, just maybe, they could add a little more politeness into their life...well that would be an understatement.

Since then, I've repeated this whole process a few more times and gotten people who were genuinely just frightened that someone would make a point of stopping them to point out that they pushed their way past someone. The truly interesting part of it all is that some people who overhear these small conversations have thanked me for taking the time to do it because they're just as sick of it as I am.

Sgt. 646Guy on patrol. My train lines are covered.

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