WHERE ARE PEOPLES MANNERS!? I know I don’t have many redeeming features but one thing I can honestly say I have is Manners. I say please and thank you; open doors for people and let them go first in queues, let older people and pregnant woman have my seat and try to be pleasant in general. Traits that are completely non existent in what I can only guess is the greater part of our community today. A sweeping generalisation I know, considering it’s the first train I’ve been on for a long time but I think, with the amount of people that were crammed onto said train, that I have a good cross section to make a judgment.
Standing there with my girlfriend standing beside me, it occurred to me that no one had offered her a seat, Everyone just sat and looked at their smart phones and tried not to make eye contact. Ok, maybe this is a very out dated concept of gentlemanly honour and some people might even take offense that I was insinuating that strong, modern woman were unable to stand like their male equals. So I let the thought leave my mind and continued to scan around; something caught my eye a minute later….
Straight ahead, near one of the doors, at the other end of the train was a quite petite, heavily pregnant lady, looking extremely uncomfortable and hemmed in by other passengers; an uncomfortable position at the best of times but whilst pregnant? Had I have been sitting near her, being brought up well as I was, my first instinct would have been to get up and give her my chair; a thought I honestly assumed would have been the first thing to come into anyone’s head in those circumstance, but not one person made any attempt at giving up a seat! I was actually mortified and if it wasn’t for the swelling masses in front of me, I honestly could have run down to the other end of the train, slapped every I-phone gawking passenger on the way, ripped the nearest person to her off their seat and sat her down.
An Isolated case maybe, centralised on a single train in Manchester? Apparently not! Talking to my, also heavily pregnant colleague in work she informed me that she is never given a seat on her train either! In fact yesterday she rode the train all the way home, with people looking at her and one had the cheek to say, when they got off: “oh, had I known you were pregnant, I would have given you my seat.” What’s a pregnant woman got to do, seriously?! Go up to a person on a seat and physically give birth on top of them? This attitude really made my blood boil but I reframed from any acts of futile pontificating because 1. I doubt anyone would have looked up from their smart phone long enough to take notice and 2. The ticket guy was on his way down so I had to get some money to pay him.
