Given the relaxed nature of my self-employment I usually manage to avoid travelling on the tube at rush hour. But occasionally, like this evening, I still get caught up in it and it is an unpleasant and degrading experience. You all end up packed into the carriage like sardines who are trying to break some kind of world record for most sardines packed into a tube carriage. Or more accurately like some humans who are trying to break the human equivalent of that world record. Someone should tell the sardines and the humans that there is no such world record. Well definitely not the sardine one. Still if youre a sardine probably the achievement itself is reward enough, without the recognition from Norris Macwhirter. (Thats how stupid sardines are. They think Norris Macwhirter is still in charge of the Guinness Book of Records.)
What surprises me, however, is the way that these (presumably) seasoned tube travellers always tend to cram themselves in to the first available train, when the electronic display shows there are another couple of tubes a minute or two behind it. Because if you wait, the second train is usually less crowded (still full-ish, but you dont end up with your face pressed against the glass) and the third one might even have enough room for you to stand without touching the person next to you. But still, people grapple their way on to the first train, as if that minutes wait is going to throw them hopelessly off schedule. Sure, a couple of them may really need to get somewhere, where sixty seconds makes all the difference, but is the time so precious to them all that it is worth enduring conditions that would be illegal if the humans were cows?
Maybe if youre on the way into work, you know you cant be late. But when youre going home? Surely its worth waiting a couple of minutes.
I think people just like to give the other passengers the impression that their life is so important that they cant wait a single second more, even if that means making an unpleasant journey, even worse.
But Im speaking as someone who is usually still in bed at the time that rush hour finishes. And who has a job I like. And nothing to get home for. So what do I know?
