Is this not rude
A woman sat in the seat behind me on my commuter train opened window. What about others in the carriage? What if we don’t want the window open? In other circumstances doing something similar would count as being rude. I am now colder than I want to be. Her choice has dictated what others feel like. There is little I can do. Shutting the window again would be as rude. So I live with it. What are other shipmates’ experiences?
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That is the problem. There is no agreement either way. Neither side ask they both just assume it is ok. It is not too bad at the moment but in winter people open the windows and you can visibly see other shiver because it is so cold.
I tend to chat to tourists and other travellers when I can. Whether I am an oddball is for others to decide.
The apparent rudeness in the OP depends on the circumstances. I've often seen people ask their fellow passengers whether it's OK for them to open the window.
I'll get me coat ...
Yeah, and I've experienced the case where there were both openable windows and A/C - which tends to lead to a kind of tug of war effect in the heat
Unless I remember to be polite. Which I might not.
I find it surprising you can manage to be too cold on a train, in a heatwave, that is apparently too full for you to change seat and get out of the draft.
Why's that? We are talking about the top part not the entire glass panel.
Some more modern train carriages here don't have windows that open, as far as I am aware. It's not something that's ever bothered me one way or another and although I no longer commute by train I do use them fairly regularly.
I'm more bothered by over-crowded trains, delayed trains or blocked loos.
I'm old enough to remember the old fashioned carriages with compartments. They were more sociable and you could open the windows.
C S Lewis had a story of his father travelling in one in Northern Ireland. A fellow passenger, was unable to get to the toilet (for whatever reason, possibly lack of a corridor and an expectation that you 'went' into the carriage with the toilets when the train stopped at a station?). The fella dropped his trousers and did a dump on the carriage floor.
Lewis's father opened the windows and lit a pipe to disguise the smell whereupon the grumpy passenger pointed to the 'No Smoking' sign on the carriage window.
Lewis's father felt it was emblematic of double-standards in Ulster Protestant religiosity.
At least we don't have to put up with that sort of thing on Britain's modern and efficient rail network ....
Why is it any more offensive than my being told to 'fuck off'?
If people tell me to 'fuck off' then that's fair enough but a mild riposte, whether 'ill-timed' or otherwise in Hell doesn't strike me as an over-reaction.
Ruth says herself that she is direct and speaks her mind. Which is fine. I respect that.
I tease people at times. I've lived in Yorkshire where teasing people is a sign of acceptance. I know it doesn't always come over well online and I sometimes get told off for it. Which is fine. People can always tell me to 'fuck off' if they don't like it.
I won't tell you to do that but I will ask you to butt-out you po-faced prig.
I didn't intend to tell you so, but here we are.
On a very practical level, if you want to be sure that people understand you're teasing, PUT THE SMILEY FACE FIRST, or the note "just a joke" or what-have-you. Then we at least understand what you're trying to do. Waiting till people haul you over the coals first is too late. Then you feel bad, and we feel bad, and ...
Ah, the whole thing kinda sucks.
I sometimes use phrases like 'joking aside' but I can't always tell whether people know whether I'm teasing or not. I banter a lot in real life and tend to do so in a straight-faced, dead-pan kind of way until people clock what I'm doing through a wry smile or I say something so absurdly hyperbolic that they realise what I'm doing.
I apologise to @Dafyd and to anyone else I may have offended here recently.
😀 now you can all butt-out you po-faced prigs ...
(In fact, I never got started, for just this reason. I don't think anybody would know if I tried.)
Ok. We do have a lot of old rolling stock here. Air-conditioning isn't as much of a thing here either. Likely to be more so in future the way things are going.
There's been a complaint near me recently about lads throwing things out of school bus windows. Nobody could climb through one though.
We are talking about narrow windows to provide ventilation.
I don't know much about US passenger trains but understand they are few and far between in some States and I've heard ex-patriate Britons say they'd never travel by train over there as it's too dangerous. They are likely to get mugged or worse.
I don't know how true that is and suspect it would only apply to certain areas.
Did they mean "regular" trains or metro systems/underground trains? I have never heard anything about Amtrak being a hotbed of mugging.
It is a heatwave. It's not rude to open windows in a heatwave, end of.
I have known two Americans talking about how dangerous it was around a particular railway station which made them more inclined to find alternatives in that area. I've heard the same about Gare du Nord in Paris but I've never encountered any issues there.
Amtrak is freaking EXPENSIVE. Not that you couldn't be mugged by a billionaire (says she, darkly). But that kind of person would never ride Amtrak anyway.
The thing I've heard most ex-pat Brits express more concern about though, is the cost of what happens if they fall ill.
A paramedic here in the UK told me how he has several times treated US tourists who have fallen ill on cruise ships and even accompanied them to hospital for free NHS treatment whilst all the while they lectured him on the evils of our wicked and socialist health care system ...
And you don't even get dining cars anymore, right? I love old ephemera like menus, and US trains used to have some really fancy meals on board.
Stand up and call for a vote.
Train travel has increased here but without sufficient modernisation of the infrastructure to support it.
I am surprised though that US Shipmates assumed that windows that open on British trains could do so to the extent that people could climb through them.
But then, whilst I know what Amtrak trains look like from the outside, I wouldn't have much idea of what they look like inside.
I think that's particularly the case in 'Western' societies such as Europe, North America and Australia etc. Some things, such as road-markings and symbols on signage appear almost universal these days. I might not be familiar with road signs in Eastern Europe, for instance, not that I've ever driven there, but in Albania I found I could pretty much work out what they meant when travelling by bus.
Australian roads, signage and procedures are relatively easy for visitors from the UK to 'read' or anticipate, partly because of the language and partly because we both drive on the same side of the road - although there are differences in protocols/rules.
I know US and Australian visitors find our roads difficult as the country lanes in particular can be a lot narrower than they expect. Automatic gears are less common here too. There was an instance of an American visitor who hired a car at Heathrow airport and drove all the way down to Devon in first gear because she'd assumed it was an automatic. She completely wrecked the gear box by driving at speed along the motorway (highway) without changing gear.
I wouldn't want to drive in the UK if I was a visitor and unfamiliar with how things are done here. A friend near Bath had an American couple stay in a house-swap. After the first few days they hardly ventured from her house as they were terrified driving along narrow roads and not knowing how to park alongside the pavement.
I can understand both those incidents.
I've also seen German, other European and North American visitors sat non-plussed at tables in pubs because they expect waiter service and aren't aware that they need to order at the bar.
What it's like to drive in Australia where the rules of the road are similar to ours but different enough to catch us out?
I was expanding on @Lamb Chopped's point that we can assume that the way we do things wherever we happen to be are the same elsewhere. I was agreeing with her and giving some examples.
I'm not 'blaming' anyone for making these kind of assumptions. I do it myself. We all do unless we've been told otherwise or seen for ourselves.
Some US posters assumed that those windows that do open on British buses and trains were big enough to climb through. They aren't. I assumed that US buses and trains might have similar windows to ours. Apparently they don't.
Those assumptions cancel one another out.
What's your beef?