Train Seats
From Plutonia:
Then, as I was travelling home on the train, I was on the window seat of a three-seater, with an Asian woman on the aisle seat. A bloke wants to sit down, and instead of acting logically and moving to the middle seat, the woman shrinks into her seat a bit so that the bloke has to squeeze past and sit in the middle.
Phil, this is quite a common occurrence. Most people have to clamber over the person sitting in the aisle seat to get to the middle seat – very few will slide across. The reasons for this can be seen in the general pattern people fill up the seats. The two-seater window seats are the first to go, followed by the three-seater window seats (with the rearmost-forward facing seats having preference to backward facing seats when you have Tangaras with fixed seating direction). Next, the three-seater aisle seats will get taken, then the two-seaters will be used, and finally the middle seat in the three-seaters. And even then, if people have a relatively short trip, they’d prefer to stand rather than get the middle seat (if they are the only seats left). People shy away from sitting with strangers – partly because of “personal space”. And it can get awfully squishy when someone obese decides to come by and plonk themselves next to you. [Whoops there goes a window cleaner swinging by outside the 11th story… heh I swear, the whole office stops and points for a minute whenever one dangles by :)] So, in view of this, the middle seat is particularly unattractive given you are sitting, quite squashed, between two people, and you can’t lean anywhere. This is compounded by the fact that there usually isn’t enough space to rest your shoulders on the seat, and you have to sit sorta hunched forwards. For reference purposes, here’s the schematics for Silver Rattlers & Tangaras. I really know too much about trains :/
4:27pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow from Work, North Sydney
