The walking commute

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22391

I walk through London to get to and from work, as I hate the underground with a passion.
However, I find myself getting just as wound up with walking commuters these days, I think I just hate people...

There are a few trends.
The majority of middle aged guys in suits know how to walk properly, how to give each other space and understand that different people may want to walk at different speeds. They always do the "drop shoulder shuffle" as you close in on each other, so as to give each other enough space to pass without colliding. Nobody else seems to know how to walk on a busy pavement, as far as I can tell.

Kids: gather in the worst places, but kids are kids, you expect them to be selfish. However, if they are accompanied by an adult guide of some sort, you would expect them to recognise that gathering them all together across the whole width of the pavement is maybe not the best place.
Book readers: You may think you can walk and read at the same time, but you really can't, you meandering mouthbreathers.
Texters: No, you are not walking at a constant pace or in a straight line...
Umbrella users: People are different heights, you need to be aware of that with your pointy sticks of death. Also, the pavement is not a golf course, only DavPaz needs an umbrella that size.
Tourists: Stop at random why don't you, we all know what you are planning to do, it isn't inconvenient in the slightest.
Loved up couples: Isn't it cute, a slow leisurly walk through London, holding hands and kissing every so often. Awwww.... Now get out of the fucking way.

But, the single worst people to encounter on the walking commute?

Middle aged business dressed women!
They will not move out of the way, they will walk straight at you and give no quarter. This is no longer a man's world and they have every right to walk wherever the fuck they like and nobody can stop them. They have important things to do with important people and moving slightly to the side is just wasting valuable microseconds!
I must admit, on occasion I do get frustrated enough to just think "fuck you" and do the same back. They expect people to move out of their way, and get quite annoyed if you do the same back to them and pretty much knock them over...

There is no moral to this story, I just wanted to vent

chinnyhill10 · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 15695

Trooper wrote:

I walk through London to get to and from work, as I hate the underground with a passion.
However, I find myself getting just as wound up with walking commuters these days, I think I just hate people...

Are you Leonard Rossiter?

Watch it all. It's wonderful. :luv:

myp · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 13:14

You sound stressed - book yourself a nice holiday.

Mr Russell · **Joined:** 6th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 12334

Still, only 2 more days until a new mafia game, right?

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22391

myoptikakaka wrote:

You sound stressed - book yourself a nice holiday.

A nice sedate walk around some Greece cities should be just the tonic

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22391

Longines Symphonette wrote:

Still, only 2 more days until a new mafia game, right?

Well, as nobody has jumped up and said they will do it, then I'll run the next, but it won't actually start till I get back from me hols

Findus Fop · **Joined:** 14th May, 2009 **Posts:** 4355

Trooper wrote:

I walk through London to get to and from work, as I hate the underground with a passion.
However, I find myself getting just as wound up with walking commuters these days, I think I just hate people...
-SNIP

6485 x all of :this:

But you've absolutely nailed it with the appraisal of suited ladies. Harpies in heels. I wrote a similar rant on my blog when I was in Singapore. I'm afraid people are just as useless the world over.

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!

I still consider myself a northern, coal-munching monkey at heart, in spite of living in That There London for the last five or six years. While the bright-eyed bumpkin who arrived on the grimy streets of Whitechapel was swiftly dispatched, his perky peepers replaced by a pair of jaundiced pallor, there was still a simple, northern barmcake of a heart belching within.

But I wasn’t all north. Indeed on top of that soft, chewy northern centre, that amiable fondant, was a healthy coating of world-weariness and smearings of London Arsehole. Lots of London Arsehole. I reeked of London Arsehole. Extending the weak confectionary metaphor, if I was a packet of Revels, I was 90% London Arsehole and 10% anything that’s not coffee.

My journey to work, like everyone else’s, was punctuated by spasmodic urges to cave in the face of anyone who got in my way. Men. Women. Old Women. Old Men. Pregnant Women. Disabled people (not Blind people, for some reason). Children. Women. Children*. Honestly, if I’d been a passenger on the Titanic, there would have been a lot of disappointed, not to mention bloodied, ladies and kids on who failed to make it onto that lifeboat. Toodles, fuckers.

Anyway, since coming to Singapore, I thought I’d chilled out a great deal when it came to commuting. This is partly because I live two tube stops from work and partly because the tube is air conditioned. It’s also because it is a more relaxed way of life out here.

But recently, I’ve been smelling the scent of London Arsehole on my clothes again, the Arsehole has been wiping itself on my sheets and shaking its dangleberries in my hair while I sleep. It is the realisation that commuters in London, New York, Sydney, Singapore, Timbuctoo (probably compounded by a less well-integrated public transport system) – wherever – they are hard-wired to annoy me to the verge of aneurysm.

In Singapore I have identified four strains of Commuter Activity that would affront any right-minded human being:

Voluntary blindness: yes, people not looking where they are going happens everywhere. But to pursue this activity so pathologically, so obsessively as people do here, it’s mind-bending. I don’t know if it’s a measure of courage or daring, but many people here simply refuse to point those eyes of theirs in the same direction as those feet of theirs. And inevitably those feet are always pointing towards me. It’s lucky for them I’m so sharp-sighted and nimble. That’s right, nimble. I can piroette with the best of them, dodging the path of the blinkered who routinely career towards me.

Escalator ineptitude: the refusal, the absolute refusal, to step off the escalator before the very, very last possible minute. It’s insane. It means muggins here - muggins the nimble, remember - can’t help but walk into the back of them because once they’ve stepped off at the last minute, they then don’t really move. I’ve inadvertantly dry humped a lot of businessmen and women here so far, and nailed one child in the back of the head with my crotch.

Escalator laziness: come on, one of the sides must be for walking, surely. I need to walk as if I have somewhere important to be. It’s one of the few validating things I have left.

Slow Walk: you wouldn’t believe how slowly some people are capable of walking, it’s phenomenal. You know when you’re behind someone who’s walking so slowly you end up tripping yourself up? That’s the standard here. Now of course it’s hot and humid, so it makes sense not to expend unnecessary energy. But think of me. I’m now expending four times as much energy, dodging the blind, dry-humping the elderly and weaving, ducking, diving between everyone else. Think of the London Arsehole.

It’s surprising. Given the number of expats out here, you’d have thought some of the London Arsehole cologne would have lingered on everyone else, but no. Everyone seems prepared to proceed with life at a perfectly leisurely and reasonable pace. It appears it’s a one-Arsehole fight and I am ready to spread that London Arsehole country-wide.

*I highlight women and children because, in my experience, they’re always the ones most eager to dig their elbows into you and push you out of the way, push you onto the tracks, as if their fannies or PSPs are on fire (respectively). Also, if I did attack them, I’d probably have the best chance of winning that fight.

Zardoz · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 13:47

Plissken · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 14:10

Purely for the bit about Revels.

nickachu · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 14:21

I tend to find this too, I just hate people out and about. it seems no-one can walk in a straight line or has any idea of what's going on around them.

Plissken · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 16:04

There is an entire generation of people who are so self-absorbed that the possibility that someone else may wish to use the supermarket or walk down the same street as them at the same time is such an outrageous concept that it simply doesn't occur to them.

Malabelm · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 16:08

There was a girl in Chester a few weeks ago that encapsulated so many of those groups at once.

She was dawdling at a snail's pace, but wouldn't move out of the way for anybody. She had absolutely no spatial awareness, completely oblivious of her surroundings. She was about 4'9 and wielded the largest man's golf umbrella I've ever seen, at about neck level for the average person. And she kept stopping dead every so often with no warning or apparent purpose.

I've never had such slow-boiled anger as I had walking behind her.

Plissken · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 16:13

I have in the past done the following...

"Excuse me..."

"Excuse me..."

"FUCKING MOVE!"

It tends to get their attention.

Malabelm · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 16:17

Plissken wrote:

I have in the past done the following...

"Excuse me..."

"Excuse me..."

"FUCKING MOVE!"

It tends to get their attention.

Her boyfriend looked a bit mean, so I stayed back, muttering under my breath.

Plissken · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 16:27

Once you've started yelling, the element of surprise tends to overpower them.

JBR · **Joined:** 2nd Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 3304

Plissken wrote:

I have in the past done the following...

"Excuse me..."

"Excuse me..."

"FUCKING MOVE!"

It tends to get their attention.

I confess to something similar on the bike the other week, cycling through Clapham Common. Girl on bike ahead of me had jumped ahead at the lights 3 times (catching me up at the red then going past the stop line, after I'd already had to move round her each time) so I was already irked, but as she rode in the middle of the path I managed to try "Excuse me, can I..."

"Excuse me, could I..."

Before she got

"OI!"

With hindsight, that's pretty tame. She did move, though.

GovernmentYard · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5318

It's the uncontrollable urge to walk abreast of one another that fucks me off most. There's a thin bit of pavement under the bridge on Newland in Hull, you can juuuust get two people side by side on the pavement without one falling into the very busy road so, when two people arrive at the far end of the bridge bit walking abreast, I'll carry on under the bridge. Am I unreasonable to expect that these two go line astern for a moment? You aren't going to suddenly have to stop talking, or even holding hands if that's so important but no, they almost never these days give you any room. My current policy is 'give no quarter' and stay on the wall side of the pavement so they can go single file or step into the road, and I've seen people nearly get hit rather than not walk directly alongside their mate.

But then I suppose this is Hull, a city full of those combination cycle track/footpath areas, many with a kerb between the two. Cycle on a pavement arund here and you'll be instafined £30 by the nearest pig, even at 6 in the morning on a totally empty stretch of super wide pavement. The penalty for meandering up the cycle lane, with your walkman on, when there's a perfectly good pavement literally centimetres to your left? Fuck all. Half the time in this town using a cycle lane means having to get off your bike and walk behind people. The majority of cyclists prefer to use the roads as if there's nothing else on them and no traffic signals, though.

devilman · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 16:41

GovernmentYard wrote:

It's the uncontrollable urge to walk abreast of one another that fucks me off most. There's a thin bit of pavement under the bridge on Newland in Hull, you can juuuust get two people side by side on the pavement without one falling into the very busy road so, when two people arrive at the far end of the bridge bit walking abreast, I'll carry on under the bridge. Am I unreasonable to expect that these two go line astern for a moment? You aren't going to suddenly have to stop talking, or even holding hands if that's so important but no, they almost never these days give you any room. My current policy is 'give no quarter' and stay on the wall side of the pavement so they can go single file or step into the road, and I've seen people nearly get hit rather than not walk directly alongside their mate.

That's something I've moaned about on here before. They probably think it's easier for the one person to step into the road to walk around them, rather than them walking single file for a few seconds. The more of them, the less likely they are to shift out of the way. I walk mostly everywhere and tend to do it outside busy times to avoid idiots and with my mp3 player to block everyone else out (although I'm not one of those who'll not look around them because I'm listening to music).

Alarm · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 16:46

As a tall chap (6'2") I am very wary of open umbrellas. It would seem the emphasis is on me to swerve out of the way if I wish to avoid being hit by one.

NervousPete · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 17:00

Commuters directly in front of Findus Fop, on his way to work, yesterday:

[quote]I still consider myself a northern, coal-munching monkey at heart, in spite of living in That There London for the last five or six years. While the bright-eyed bumpkin who arrived on the grimy streets of Whitechapel was swiftly dispatched, his perky peepers replaced by a pair of jaundiced pallor, there was still a simple, northern barmcake of a heart belching within. etc.../quote]

Probably one of the best written and most amusing things yet put up on Beteo by a Beexer, kudos! :luv:

YOG · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 17:39

Plissken wrote:

There is an entire generation of people who are so self-absorbed that the possibility that someone else may wish to use the supermarket or walk down the same street as them at the same time is such an outrageous concept that it simply doesn't occur to them.

Aye, shops are the worst. If a race of aliens from another universe came to Earth, and, for reasons unfathomable by our comparatively feeble human minds, spent most of their people-studying time in British shopping centres and supermarkets, they could only come to the conclusion that human beings were uniformly a bunch of impossibly rude, selfish cunts.

What is it with people? It's as though those automatic sliding doors have powerful empathy-sapping capabilities. Everyone just turns into a pushy, shovey, blind, shameless prick - even if the place is dead, like at 8:30am on a Tuesday. Worse are the ones who seemingly deliberately block off aisles with their trolleys, delighted to be creating queues of Lemmings trying to push through. I duck, dodge and pirouette all over the place, apologising for my own existence, but it's high time I started giving these zombs a taste of their own piss.

Findus Fop · **Joined:** 14th May, 2009 **Posts:** 4355

NervousPete wrote:

Commuters directly in front of Findus Fop, on his way to work, yesterday:

Quote:

I still consider myself a northern, coal-munching monkey at heart, in spite of living in That There London for the last five or six years. While the bright-eyed bumpkin who arrived on the grimy streets of Whitechapel was swiftly dispatched, his perky peepers replaced by a pair of jaundiced pallor, there was still a simple, northern barmcake of a heart belching within. etc.../quote]

Probably one of the best written and most amusing things yet put up on Beteo by a Beexer, kudos! :luv:

High praise indeed from scholarly NervousPete! Bloody love everything you've written on Beex, please never stop.

TBH same goes for a lot of the posters here. Relentlessly entertaining.

Agent Starling · **Joined:** 8th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 1701

Klatrymadon wrote:

Worse are the ones who seemingly deliberately block off aisles with their trolleys, delighted to be creating queues of Lemmings trying to push through. I duck, dodge and pirouette all over the place, apologising for my own existence, but it's high time I started giving these zombs a taste of their own piss.

Supermarkets are also a pet hate of mine. The most irritating thing is when you go through the main doors, and you get two women (hate to say it, but it's always women) essentially blocking the entrance/exit because they have stopped to chat and have their trolleys more or less blocking the entire space of the door.

Mr Russell · **Joined:** 6th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 12334

I LOVE when people block aisles because it gives me the opportunity to not stop and go SMASH FACE all upside their head and trolley.

MaliA · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 19:14

I get my shopping delivered. Also, never visit Oxford.

Bobbyaro · **Joined:** 18th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 11897

That is why Waitrose is a nicer shopping experience, they have the aisles wider.

ApplePieOfDestiny · **Joined:** 17th Dec, 2008 **Posts:** 8293

Similar to GY, couples who insist on walking hand in hand, regardless of the circumstances.

I had to beat this out of my wife who at the very concept of walking anywhere together, would go in for a hand latch. Crowded marketplace, trying to get through a gig, in the supermarket. The more likely that it seemed that this was not sensible, the more committed the hand hold. NO.

sinister agent · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 7046

The worst are doorway-loiterers. Acres of space? You'll be wanting to stand in the only place within a 100m radius where hundreds of people need to walk through you, then. Idiots.

Bobbyaro wrote:

That is why Waitrose is a nicer shopping experience, they have the aisles wider.

Ah, but they'll just take that as an invitation to become fatter.

Decca · **Joined:** 23rd Jun, 2010 **Posts:** 2282

You forgot about the elderly. I live in a old people's town and sweet jesus they are fucking annoying. The old dears who are struggling along to get the tin of meat for the cat are fine, they stick to the side and don't want to cause anyone any bother, but you get two or more old people and they constantly stop abruptly at random right in the middle of the pavement without giving a shit about anyone around them. >:(

ApplePieOfDestiny · **Joined:** 17th Dec, 2008 **Posts:** 8293

Decca wrote:

You forgot about the elderly. I live in a old people's town and sweet jesus they are fucking annoying. The old dears who are struggling along to get the tin of meat for the cat are fine, they stick to the side and don't want to cause anyone any bother, but you get two or more old people and they constantly stop abruptly at random right in the middle of the pavement without giving a shit about anyone around them. >:(

Stop giving Cavey a hard time.

MaliA · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 20:11

Trooper wrote:

I must admit, on occasion I do get frustrated enough to just think "fuck you" and do the same back. They expect people to move out of their way, and get quite annoyed if you do the same back to them and pretty much knock them over...

Trooper, yesterday

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49244

sinister agent wrote:

The worst are doorway-loiterers. Acres of space? You'll be wanting to stand in the only place within a 100m radius where hundreds of people need to walk through you, then. Idiots.

Bus doorways are the worst for this. Why on earth do people stand in the exit doors, when they're not getting off and there's room elsewhere? Took someone off with me once when the ignored suggestions that they get out of the way.

MaliA · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 21:51

Bicester Town station is terrible for this. People (after shopping at the village) try and get on the train as the commuters are getting off. I let the people with the bikes exit first. As a cavalry, they are good, even if some keep their bikes where people should sit.

sinister agent · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 7046

Craster wrote:

sinister agent wrote:

The worst are doorway-loiterers. Acres of space? You'll be wanting to stand in the only place within a 100m radius where hundreds of people need to walk through you, then. Idiots.

Bus doorways are the worst for this. Why on earth do people stand in the exit doors, when they're not getting off and there's room elsewhere? Took someone off with me once when the ignored suggestions that they get out of the way.

My favourite is when the bus is quite busy, so you're standing near the doors, or stairs, and the people trying to get off keep trying to get you out of the way... when there are also people directly in front of you who are also getting off. Where the fuck am I supposed to go? Other people are getting off, too, and I can't get out of your way without getting in theirs. Wait your bloody turn, you cockend.

Zardoz · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 22:38

Craster wrote:

Took someone off with me once when the ignored suggestions that they get out of the way.

Bobbyaro · **Joined:** 18th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 11897

I love the peolpe who get off the tube, then stop. I just walk into them now.

Grim... · **Posted:** Tue Jun 28, 2011 23:38

Pushchairs. PUSHCHAIRS.
Also wheelchairs, but mostly pushchairs.

Plissken · **Posted:** Wed Jun 29, 2011 8:51

They are handy those. Shoving out blindly into traffic. Blocking empty and wide pavements. Slowing all movement behind them to a crawl. Taking up six spaces at a table in a crowded pub.

Apparently you can transport small humans in them but the women with them don't seem to give a shit about that.

Curiosity · **Posted:** Wed Jun 29, 2011 9:05

Bobbyaro wrote:

I love the peolpe who get off the tube, then stop. I just walk into them now.

See also: dawdling at the bottom of escalators.

Curiosity · **Posted:** Wed Jun 29, 2011 9:05

Though, to be honest, unless I'm specifically late for something important, I tend to just go a bit slower these days, as it's not worth the hassle.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49244

There's 'going a bit slower' and 'having to make a conscious effort to move your legs that slowly' though.

Trooper · **Joined:** 4th Mar, 2010 **Posts:** 22391

Curiosity wrote:

Bobbyaro wrote:

I love the peolpe who get off the tube, then stop. I just walk into them now.

See also: dawdling at the bottom of escalators.

And getting on to escalators, just fucking step on, it's not going to steal your feet.

Curiosity · **Posted:** Wed Jun 29, 2011 9:57

Trooper wrote:

Curiosity wrote:

Bobbyaro wrote:

I love the peolpe who get off the tube, then stop. I just walk into them now.

See also: dawdling at the bottom of escalators.

And getting on to escalators, just fucking step on, it's not going to steal your feet.

BUT WHAT IF IT DOES?!?!?!?!?

nickachu · **Posted:** Wed Jun 29, 2011 10:09

Curiosity wrote:

Trooper wrote:

Curiosity wrote:

Bobbyaro wrote:

I love the peolpe who get off the tube, then stop. I just walk into them now.

See also: dawdling at the bottom of escalators.

And getting on to escalators, just fucking step on, it's not going to steal your feet.

BUT WHAT IF IT DOES?!?!?!?!?

THEN CRAWL OUT OF MY FUCKING WAY YOU MORON!

Cavey · **Posted:** Wed Jun 29, 2011 14:33

ApplePieOfDestiny wrote:

Decca wrote:

You forgot about the elderly. I live in a old people's town and sweet jesus they are fucking annoying. The old dears who are struggling along to get the tin of meat for the cat are fine, they stick to the side and don't want to cause anyone any bother, but you get two or more old people and they constantly stop abruptly at random right in the middle of the pavement without giving a shit about anyone around them. >:(

Stop giving Cavey a hard time.

LOL!

You cheeky bleeder

I'M ONLY BLOODY 44, NOT 94, YOU BARSTEWARDS!!111!

Plissken · **Posted:** Wed Jun 29, 2011 14:48

'S OK. You don't look a day over 50.

myp · **Posted:** Wed Jun 29, 2011 14:52

You all sound stressed - book a holiday. Preferably a week somewhere sunny.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49244

I've just come back from holiday. If you like I can have a big rant about fucking RVs and idiot plebs incapable of driving them?

flis · **Joined:** 26th May, 2008 **Posts:** 3333

myoptikakaka wrote:

You all sound stressed - book a holiday. Preferably a week somewhere sunny.

I hope to god your holiday destination is over-run by kids....Preferably chav ones in about 3 different colours with a white, chain smoking whale for a mother. And they have names like Shani'Qua, Obamani'Qua and Fri'chikeneesa. And they shit in the pool.

ENJOY!!

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!

Except I don't wish this because that would ruin Anges week....Although, she is taking you so...

Cavey · **Posted:** Wed Jun 29, 2011 15:13

Nah, not stressed at all (well, I am of course, but not over this). Made me laugh, actually - welcome relief from the serious grind.

...But yes, a holiday would be a nice idea!

Be Excellent To Each Other

The walking commute
A step too far.

Who is online

Be Excellent To Each Other

The walking commute A step too far.

Who is online

The walking commute
A step too far.