Escalators
Nothing wrong with escalators themselves it’s just the way that some people use them that bugs me.
I used to work in Manchester and travel on the trains from Stoke-on-Trent every day.
I recall one day leaving early to come home for some reason and I was behind a gaggle of women, all late fifties to early sixties crowded onto the escalator from the Fairfield street entrance. When they got to the top, at the platform level, they just stopped. They didn’t know where they were and needed to have a look around to orientate themselves. So five women with huge wheely suitcases, going to Manchester Airport I guess, stopped dead, in a bunch, at the top of the escalator. Well all of us other commuters comming up behind just got pushed smack into them, we were trying to clamber over their bags and trying not to knock these silly women over. They had been so full of the joys of going on holiday together, and struck by the sight of this huge platform concourse, that they were completely oblivious of all the other people!
But quite regularly there is always someone who ignores the “stand on the right” rule for the escalators. You see them get on, there is a long line of folk standing on the right, patiently waiting for the escalator to get to the bottom, and this person stands on the left. They don’t notice the line of orderly commuters. I think it happens when someone is new to travelling on the trains and they get to the escalator and, for some reason, no one is actually walking down on the left, so they don’t ‘get’ the keep right rule. Often no one is actually walking down on the left because there is a bunch of these “stand-on-the-lefters”! Wouldn’t hurt to make the “Stand on the Right” signs a little bigger either.