Commuters behaving badly: watch your backs, or … your manners. Japan has recently created an “etiquette police force” to monitor its public transportation system with the goal of making your commute more peaceful and polite. For fear that etiquette is quickly sliding out of their country’s bloodline, this task force will, among other things, keep travelers’ ipod’s on civilized volumes, silence yappy cell phone loud talkers, and give seats back to those who really need them, democrats the elderly and immobile.
The NYC Subway System should take note from Japan’s manner lesson. The Diplomat has traveled the world’s public transportation systems and has never been so pushed, prodded, and knocked down (once by a self-entitled angry Caribbean woman) as he has been on New York City trains. Chickens on the bus in Morocco are more cordial.
Just imagine if Bloomberg got a burly Bronx squad together to, not check your bags, but check your attitude? Your commute would maybe look something like this:
(1) A row of seated older folks on the right and a row of pregnant women on the left. Instead of the heavy guy taking up three seats and three seats worth of standing room while the pregnant woman has to lean over his legs to hold the bar and smell his onion sandwich.
(2) Quietness. Instead of distorted buzzing from your neighbor’s ipod playing a rave tune on repeat while the loud talker guy behind you waxing options trading doesn’t actually get off at Wall Street as you had hoped.
(3) Single file loading and unloading of passengers during rush hour. Instead of disembarking the train to an audience of 50 people walking straight at you as soon as the doors open and giving you icy looks and telling you to “say excuse me” when you are the one following subway society rules. And I’d like to say something to those people: nothing makes The Diplomat’s eye twitch more than those who turn their own missteps into victimhood.
