Modern life dictates that the woman of today cannot spend her life being serenely chauffeured from place to place in her private carriage. Leave that to Jane Austen – the train is much more convenient.
However, sometimes this leaves one in sticky dilemmas. Hence Miss Manners’ Guide To Commuting Etiquette – for all those who want Rolls Royce manners in Cityrail situations.
On The Bus Or Train
Keep your body odour and general space occupation to a minimum. Do not be the woman who smells of yesterday’s pub lunch and takes up two seats with her laptop and shopping bags.
Kindly stay off the phone unless it is an emergency. If your fellow passengers wanted to know about your gall bladder operation, or your parrot’s psychological issues, they would ask. The same goes for conversation with friends – keep it discreet.
Give up your seat to people who need it – the (obviously) pregnant, the elderly and the overladen. Unless you spent all day down a coal mine, their need is greater.
Do let people off before you yourself attempt to board, and don’t push wildly to emerge when you need to disembark. You are not Queen Victoria, or an oncoming barge. You do not have right of way.
Please use your headphones. It is the height of bad etiquette to force the entire carriage to listen to your Australian Idol compilation because you’ve decided that’s your Commuting Playlist.
On The Road
The common rule in merging is: let one person go, and then go yourself. It’s a tag-team system and keeps the minimum of respect while also maintaining traffic flow.
Unless you have a friend in the back seat about to give birth, you do not have the right to stampede home at the speed of light. Particularly if you have an expensive car. Behave.
Keep to the speed limit. Any faster and you risk prosecution. Any slower and you risk abuse.
If a person cuts you off, veers wildly into your lane, is going a little too slowly or generally behaves like a buffoon, do not scream, swear, or vent like a steam train. It’s just a commute. They didn’t damage your car. Life goes on.
Stay alert. Stay off your phone, don’t fiddle excessively with the radio, and don’t spend most of your time abusing other drivers without looking at the road.
Horns are for the following: extreme violations of traffic law; waking up people who’ve fallen asleep at traffic lights. They are not for the following: minor explosions of rage; communicating with people in the next car; tooting along to a song on the radio.
Know the rules about cycling on the road if you own a bike, and stick to them. And yes, traffic lights do apply to you.
In Car Pools
Unless you drive the car, you do not have much say in the radio station, unless it’s truly offensive to your ears or sanity.
Be on time. Do not demand that the car wait for you while you pick up your laptop, cardboard, lunch and spare shoes.
Give everybody personal space in the back seat. Even if they’re smaller than you. Even if they’re awful people.
If you’re on a roster for car-pooling, don’t skive off your turn more than twice for no apparent reason. This gives your inconvenienced workmates proper reason to want to scalp you with the photocopier.
Yours sincerely,
Miss Manners
