I don't travel by bus very much but today had cause to catch a bus from North Greenwich tube station to leafy Shooters Hill. When I arrived at the bus stop there were about eight people already there waiting for either my bus or two other options. It was not an orderly gathering. By the time my bus arrived the number of people was about 30 and it was just an absolute scrum and I mean people just barging through. At least 15 got on before me and I was well placed. By the way. Not a school kid in sight.
I don't remember this ever a problem growing up and in fact a queue was often a place for people to show courtesy.
What on earth has gone wrong with the British orderly queue ?
If rationing ever comes back I'll starve.
5
Comments
Last year I had to get on a bus outside Woolwich Arsenal station, there were about 12 people in the queue. When the bus arrived 3 times that number attacked the door en mass to get on ! Never seen anything like it !
Always let people off first before stepping on. Now it seems get on as fast as possible no matter who is in front, mother with kid, old lady with shopping, whoever, shove em aside cos you are after a seat. I have noticed it is foreign women who are the worst culprits for this.
I suggest you get off at Blackheath next time and bus up. I queued outside the station a few months back. A real orderly queue. Lovely and tidy.
And there's this tart who is there every morning and whilst everyone else manages to queue semi-orderly, she always decides it is more important that she gets a seat and somehow always worms her way to the front even if she was nowhere near the door when the train stopped.
I find the scrum approach most irritating when I'm getting off the train and no one wants to get out of the way and risk not getting a seat so I often have to shoulder barge whoever is standing directly in front of the door because he or she is too thick to realise that is the worst place to stand when the doors open and there are people waiting to get off.
I have found that shouting "rude prick" at the top of your voice gets the point across.
I almost felt I could hear Rule Britannia in the breeze as this gallant young thing just did something nice in the name of common decency.
Luckily I managed to barge the old biddy out of the way and snap up the seat for myself, but I couldn't help but feel a warm glow for the nation's youth at that point, maybe chivalry is not yet dead in this green and pleasant land :-)
( ok I made up the bit about me pushing the old dear out the way, but I did genuinely see the girl's thoughtful act yesterday. Good on her)
Weird behaviour from the cretins pushing, as this this occurs even when there's way more seats on the bus than people in the queue.
I have noted there's a narrow demographic which is particularly keen on barging their through a queue to get onto a bus; in most cases I can correctly predict who the pushers and shovers will be when the bus turns up.
.. around here in Grimsby, even in the roughest part of town people are pretty meticulous and polite when it comes to queuing and other social niceties ..
What's even stranger with that place (Dont know if @Curb_It has seen it too) yet when your waiting round the bus stops it feels really quiet with about 10 people standing around then when a bus turns round everyone seems to materialise out of the ground and your having to fight your way through 50 people all trying to get on the same bus
As a non driver I use the bus 4/5 times a day mainly the 161/244/472.
Woolwich is the place for the full queing experience especially the 244 to Thamesmead. With risk of raising the ire of the race police you can tell the nationalities by their behaviour.
.
SHG, have you encountered the chickens graveyard on the upper deck?
sorry i didn't get to talk to today. bit of a mad day. i'll email you in next few days. am getting a lot of interest shown in museum project (and maybe a little bit of money!)