Survival of the fittest

I was sitting on the tube the other day and had that age old dilemma – was the woman standing in front of me pregnant or just a little on the more ‘substantial’ side? Do you run the risk of offending someone by offering them a seat or do you ignore someone who may need a seat more than you. So what did I do? I wimped out and decided that the simplest solution was to shut my eyes and try and have a doze hoping that the problem would have gone away when I opened them again. I occasionally glanced at her, including when she sat down anyway a couple of stops later and decided that she wasn’t pregnant anyway, so had avoided a potentially awkward conversation. Why can’t it be more obvious when someone is pregnant? But then what if someone is pregnant but they don’t want anyone to know and through eagle eyed observation you spot that they are and offer them your seat thus broadcasting it to anyone within earshot? It’s a minefield to decide the right thing to do.

I see quite a large number of blind people on the tube as well and there’s one blind woman who gets *really* offended if people offer her a seat and her reaction must make people really regret the very suggestion of giving up their seat for her. So even where it’s more obvious that someone might want to sit down, you still don’t know if you’re doing the right thing. No wonder it often seems easier to just focus on your own little world and ignore all your fellow commuters.

The other day as I got on the tube some woman deliberately obstructed me so she could spot any empty seats before I did. Fortunately for me I must be a more seasoned traveller than her and located an empty seat while she was looking elsewhere for one. She then went up to a woman who was about to sit down and prodded her a couple of times and said “I want to sit there. I want to sit there.” and the other woman just said “Er... Ok” and let the woman sit down. See? It’s not always manners that count. It’s survival of the fittest – or the most rude.