I once witnessed an adult woman have a screaming meltdown because somebody politely pointed out that she shouldn't be having a loud telephone conversation in the quiet carriage. It's a nice idea in theory, but doesn't work in practice because people are awful.
Smoking carriages were disgusting but, hear me out, that was an entire carriage of people who could be trusted in a public place on flammable seats in a wooden-framed carriage with a naked flame. I'm not sure there's one single carriage worth of people in this country I'd trust with that now.
The trains here DID have ashtrays. Unfortunately the smoking section on double decker Sydney buses however was the top deck, which was the attractive one for kids.
I know "everything's so terrible now, back in my day" takes are tepid at best, but basically everyone seems to be in the market to do selfish or ignorant shit (or at least film someone else doing it) for the gram/tiktok these days.
Musical theatre fever gripped the nation and everyone kept spontaneously breaking out into choreographed song and dance numbers about ‘We’re all going to work! Hoorah!’ But one soloist breaks through with ‘I don’t wanna be stuck in this rut for life, there must be more, I gotta go!’ Etc.
They are still working, with the occasional lapse, in Sydney intercity trains. I'm semi tolerant on 20 minute or less trips, but traveling to the city is a 90 minute trip so I don't hesitate to offer a severe reminder as do others.
The one time I challenged a noisy group of women they apologised, said they were off for a girls’ weekend, invited me to join them and fed me Prosecco and gin-tins the rest of the journey.
If this is about people playing their phones loud I think the problem is when phone companies removed the headphone jack. It meant people couldn’t just pick up cheap headphones and so started blaring their crap and not caring
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See also: Dictators.
Tho no one pays attention anyway!