Use the back door!!

One of the things about living in such a densely populated area is that you come into contact (continually) with soooo many other people (whether you want to or not). This can be great when you think about it in terms of opportunities for people watching, for learning about different cultures and just generally seeing some interesting things. But this can also be frustrating when things that seem like they should be simple common courtesies just do not seem to occur to some (many) of those people you are in continual contact with resulting in the actions of one functioning in a way that make things more difficult for everyone else. These individuals, who move through (or worse stay put) as I move through my day DRIVE ME CRAZY. I often wonder if people don’t realize they are being a pain, don’t know how to not be a pain or just don’t care that they are making things more difficult for others around them.

Case in point getting on and off the bus. Busses have 2 doors for a reason, to make getting on an off more efficient. You have to get on from the front because you have to pay the driver and you should get off in the back so people getting on do not have to wait for you to push your way to the front and then get off. With, of course, exceptions being made for people who for individual reasons cannot use the back door, and/or people sitting in the front who would cause a delay and more problems trying to push to the back. Pretty simple, straightforward, not difficult logic to follow right?

Daily I see people holding up the bus because someone who was sitting in the far rear feels the need to walk all the way to the front of the bus after it stops (as opposed to working their way to the front en route). On a nice sunny day, when you are not really in a hurry this is not a huge deal (although it is still annoying), but on a crappy, rainy day like today, when the bus is already running 30 minutes late and you are standing there getting wet because you put your umbrella down in preparation for boarding the bus not realizing some schmuck is going to try to press their way to the front and then stand there while they take out their umbrella before stepping out of the way… it makes you want to beat that person with a stick.

Although the worst I have seen occurred yesterday. On my way home from work there were two boys on the bus that were probably high school freshmen who, when I got on the bus, were standing in the well by the back door of the bus. Every time that someone wanted to get off using the back door they had to try to maneuver through these two. Finally, when it came time for these two to get off the bus, do you think they used the back door that they had been standing in front of all that time???? Of course not, they walked to the front of the bus and got off. While some of it is obviously teenaged idiocy they are just one example of soooooo many.
Maybe there should be a gate ¼ of the way into the bus and if you go past that gate you can’t get to the front of the bus anymore and you have to use the back door. Of course that would only further exacerbate another bus courtesy issue that I will address in a later post, this one already being much too long.