Gobsh1tes on Public Transport

allybee101

I was on the tube last weekend and listened to three young women gossiping about a mutual friend with utter venom. Poor girl's ears must have been burning.
With friends like that who needs enemies?

Then there was the group of A level students, one of whom was dominating the conversation with various statments like "I must go to New York. If I work there I need a Masters to make it big. And I've got to the homeland. It's part of who I am. Maybe for my gap yah..." (search for "Gap Yah" on Youtube for an entertaining 5 minutes).

Searcher

MamaMoo wrote: »

You got off lightly!
My last few bus journey's have included
-little boys who think they're "hardcore gangsters" talking about drink, drugs and "gash".
-one girl describing herself giving birth in graphic detail, including projectile pooing on the midwife.
-one girl on the phone to her friend talking about her recent conquests
-one woman, smelling of fish, standing at the front of the bus preaching about Jesus and covering the first 3 lots of seats in spit.


Sometimes, I think it might be better for my sanity if I just got a car!

Thanks to that gash comment my laptop screen is covered in Pepsi max :rotfl:

LimeLight

The times I wished I'd taken notes, but I'll never know if she found him cheating with "that slapper bird"

Tropez

p00hsticks wrote: »

As far as I'm concerned any other inconsequential chit chat / business talk etc can wait until peope reach their destination.

I disagree with this.

The train companies have been very blatant in their courting of business commuters. I remember the old Rik Mayall adverts for Virgin Trains - "Business brains take Virgin Trains" - providing examples of how travel by train is superior than car for those who may have a need to work during that time; and they're right and moreover they expect to be used in this way. People might think that wifi is offered on trains to let people look at amusing videos of dogs falling over on Youtube, but the reality is that it is to keep business customers happy hence why companies like Virgin offer it for free in First Class.

I work mostly from home but several times a month I'm required to travel to one of two different offices, the farthest of which is a ~2 hour train journey away and when I travel to this office, I am usually gone for about 6-8 hours, half of which or more could be taken up by the train journey.

It simply isn't feasible for me not to be contactable at all during this time. At home, I am easily contactable (even when I would admit I rather wasn't! ) and have full access to video conferencing, Skype and phone to conduct business, which includes managing other employees. While I would quite happily spend the train journey relaxing somehow, it can't be helped that sometimes I am required to attend to business matters on the phone.

However, I do also believe in showing consideration for others on board, thus I don't reserve seats in designated Quiet Zones and I speak quietly on the phone (the person phoning me can turn up their volume, after all). If I get the sense that a conversation would be long and I could deal with it via email instead I will also do that and I always try to keep the call length to a minimum and sometimes if I'm not carrying anything too bulky I'll even leave the cabin to take the call although this depends on what I have with me. I don't leave anything unattended on a train.

Azari

p00hsticks wrote: »

As some one guilty of this one, I have to jump to my defence and put an alternative viewpoint that I think this (and ordering a taxi) is the ONLY justified use of a mobile phone on a train.

I've often wondered why people are so down on someone letting someone else know when they will arrive. Seems a perfectly sensible thing to be doing.

I think it may be a hangover from the time when mobiles first started appearing and you would have idiots calling people just to tell them they were phoning from a train.

duckeggblue

Lady have problems

Littlestars_2

Had one today with a guy on the bus who's phone rang and proceeded to shout and swear loudly down the phone as someone had apparently been spreading things about him. Proceeded to call this person up and call him a man that sucks mens privates (the cleaner term) about twenty times with the odd "tell me where the f you are so i can come and batter the f out of you". After five mins of this and the guy proceeding to go on about how he was going to batter this guy he got off the bus and as the bus pulled away all you could hear was swearing.

There was a time before where a man was behind me on the bus talking on his phone telling his mate how he beat up his partner, stole money from her and gambled it away. One of the conversations that is not meant for public me thinks.

Gettingtherequickly

I spent 3 hours on a train with a work colleague once and we were obviously working for most of the trip. Neither of us are loudly spoken, so it was a huge shock at the end when a little old lady came trundling up to us, stuck her head between us and announced "that was the worse journey I have ever had because you 2 didn't stop talking!" I can only assume that we prevented zzzzz's

The_ICT_Engineer

Tiddlywinks wrote: »

I feel your pain...

What the heck did everyone do before mobiles?

Sent a telegram

Mrs_Ryan

I feel sorry for my fellow passengers on the number 9 bus between Nottingham and Loughborough today I spent the vast majority of the journey cackling like a harpy down the phone to my best mate about our rugby lads, what she was going to do to one of them if he wound her up, and the fact one of them was getting stressed about being lost in Ikea :rotfl: we then proceeded to speculate about what they may be doing in there which made me laugh even more and at one point I exclaimed loudly 'if he tweets that I'm jumping off this bus and calling a taxi to Ikea!' which made her go off into fits of laughter and prompted a few startled looks from my fellow passengers :rotfl:
The bus was silent other than that I'm guilty of being on the phone a lot when I'm on the bus, mainly because I live in a rural area and it takes ages to get anywhere.. however I don't usually hear conversations anyone else has as I usually have my earphones in...