15+ Times When People Got Off Public Transport With a Story to Tell

Public transport has long become an integral part of our daily lives, and we no longer tend to notice how many comical and unusual situations occur during the journey. Sometimes even one phrase from a passenger can bring a smile to your face and make you feel positive for the rest of the day.

• I'm travelling on a bus. A young mother is standing with her little daughter. She looks very tired. Some guy says, "Oh, why so beautiful girl looks so gloomy?" She doesn't react.
  The daughter looks at the guy sternly and says loudly, "Leave my mom alone! She wants to go to the toilet!" You should have seen the faces of the other passengers. © azolotoi / Pikabu
• I'm travelling on a tram. The phone rings. It's my mom. She starts asking me how I am, how's my health. I say, "Mom, it's inconvenient to talk now, people around are listening."
  I say goodbye and promise to call her back later. And then some woman in front of me turns around and says, "Shame on you to think about us like that! No one wants to listen to your conversations!" I wanted to laugh, but held back. © Leara / Pikabu

• I’m travelling on a bus. Next to me is an old couple. The man keeps looking at her and smiling, he’s literally glowing! And she’s sullenly silent.
  And then the old man, apparently, can’t stand it and says, “Oh, my dear, it’s so good that you forgot your dentures at home today. You’re so silent.” The lady snorted under her nose and turned away, and the passengers next to her could hardly hold from laughing. I still remember that man’s smile.
• Yesterday, I was travelling on the subway with the classmate I’ve been liking for a long time. At some point, she didn’t keep on her feet and began to fall. For a split second, I imagined how romantically I catch her, how our gazes meet, how beautiful everything is...
  But in the end, by some miracle, I couldn’t keep on my feet myself and started to fall. The girl ended up being deftly caught by another guy, and I broke my nose. © Chamber 6 / VK
• I’m travelling on the subway. Some man stares at me across the carriage, then heads toward me, and puts his arm around my waist. While all the words I’m about to say to him are running through my head, he bends down to my ear and whispers, “Miss, your fly is unzipped, zip it up, I’ll cover you!” And indeed, it was unzipped. © Overheard / Ideer
• In the mornings, my husband drove me to the highway where my shuttle bus to work ran. It was winter, I had a leopard coat. I would stand on the road catching these shuttle buses and my husband would wait next to me in the car.
  If there were no seats in the bus, and it passed by, I would get back to the car, we would overtake it, and I would stand at the next stop in case someone got off. Poor drivers of those shuttle buses, they probably thought they were going crazy seeing the same girl in a leopard coat at 2 or 3 stops in a row. © Podsushano / Ideer

• My son and I, he was about 4 years old at the time, were traveling on a long slinky bus, and there was no one else on it but us. At the bus stop, a woman enters, takes the seat in front of us, immediately gets up and opens the window wide open. I ask my son if it’s blowing to him, and the woman becomes indignant, saying that it’s hot outside and why we always complain. By the way, it was only 68 degrees and a rather cool breeze.
  But it’s not even about the weather. Why in a huge empty bus could not she choose another seat? And why was it necessary to make a fuss, even though no one complained about anything? © Virgo / ADME
• I was riding the Metrorail subway into my office from a distant suburb (the end of the line) into Washington, DC when a haggard woman in a trench coat with a huge shopping bag got on. She proceeded to pull a complete “beauty kit” out of the bag. After half an hour or so, I could not resist taking a picture while she was in the middle of her transformation.
  By this point, she had finished washing with damp soapy rags and had put on rollers. Later, she would comb it out and spray what by then was a crowd of passengers with her hair spray. By the time we got to her stop in DC, she had everything back in the bag and looked as good as she was ever going to get. © Jim Grupé / Quora
• I was once travelling from work through heavy traffic on a bus, and a woman, probably an employee of either a notary’s office or a law firm, was sitting next to me. For more than an hour, she called and answered the phone, instructing, swearing, chattering in her legal language. I thought I was going to lose my mind. © Gabriela / ADME
• I was late for my plane: I was flying for the first time to visit my future husband. It was late, I was traveling alone, with my suitcases, money was tight. While I was looking for the stop of the last bus, it left. There was nobody on the square, a minibus was standing at a distance.
  The driver looked at me and asked, “Did you see where the bus went?” I sort of remembered. He said, “Get on.” We caught up with the bus, and I made it. Now I’m married. © Overheard / Ideer

• I’ve been riding public transit for at least 50 years, and have seen everything you can imagine. But for some reason, one incident stands out. Like many commuters, the individual concerned was having his dinner on the bus. And I mean a meal, from a well-known chicken restaurant, that included potatoes, a biscuit, coleslaw and several chicken parts in a box.
  While I watched, he ate a greasy leg, savoring every bite, then tossed the bone in the box. Then, the driver suddenly braked, and Chicken Man grabbed the support bar with his grease-covered hand to keep from falling, sliding several inches as he struggled to remain upright.
  Okay, I understand he didn’t want to get hurt, but after he made no attempt to wipe the bar with the paper napkin usually included in the box (or even his sleeve or shirt-tail), but in fact, made it even greasier and dirtier, when after gnawing a wing, he used it again to free his hand of chicken debris. I just thought of how many people would grab that same support and wonder what the heck they got on their hands. © Kathleen Alexandrakis / Quora
• Once I was traveling home, I tried to fix my glasses on my nose, but they were not there. In a panic, I start to fumble around the seats of the bus, crying in my mind that I won't have a pizza for dinner because I'll have to buy new glasses. Then I remember that only yesterday I bought contact lenses! I wonder what it'll be like when I'm old. © Overheard / Ideer
• I moved to Japan earlier this year, and my first month here I was riding on the underground with my headphones in. Then it happened: A lady with a baby stroller walks on. The doors close. I hear a quack.
  I put my headphones back in, but I hear it again. Okay, what the hell is going on? I look over at the stroller and sure enough, there is an actual duck dressed up in the stroller quacking. Now I’m seriously thinking, “What is going on?!”
  Ready for the weirdest part of the whole thing? Nobody else cared. They didn’t even look at it. But they all started looking at me as I took out my headphones, leaned forward and started laughing.
  Seriously, they looked at me like I was crazy, and it just made the situation 10 times more bizarre. I actually had to get off at the same stop as her, and the duck was quacking its head off as she strolled it off the train, but even then nobody seemed to care or think it was as funny as I did. © Chris Schwab / Quora

• A packed bus. I didn’t have any change, so I had to pay the driver with a large banknote. I waited for change, but there was none. I asked for it, and he replied, “I gave it all, I don’t need other people’s money.”
  We argued with him the whole way, and then we heard a couple who were sitting in the front and had to give me the change, giggling. They just started to get off, threw my money on the floor and rushed out of the bus. We were all cursing at them. I apologized to the driver. © Podsushano / Ideer
• In summer, our roads are getting repaired, so public transport often changes its route. In the best case scenario, it just doesn’t reach the end of the line. The driver, of course, tries his best, announces that the trolleybus goes there and doesn’t go there. But people often jump into the cabin on the run and listen to this announcement when the doors have already been closed.
  Yesterday I was on my way to work and heard so many interesting things. The conductor swears that passengers don’t want to pay, people who got on by mistake and already prepared to get off at the next stop, shouting that they don’t have to spend money. So, tell me who’s right.
• I don’t like sitting on buses. I almost always feel stuffy, especially if the cabin is crowded. Once an elderly man tried to sit me next to him. I explained that the sun was shining too brightly, I felt warm, let the person who really needed it sit next to me.
  The old man wouldn’t stop. He was offended that I didn’t want to sit next to him. Since I’m afraid of people and can’t stand unnecessary conversations, I had to get off at the next stop. © Singing Coon / ADME
• I had a pregnant friend who would get on at the next stop, so I always saved a seat for her. But then she and another pregnant woman got on the bus at the next stop. I gave her my seat, because the others (mostly men) immediately started examining the floor. © villiss / ADME

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