Pet Peeve of the Week: Bus Seats

Today’s blog is going to be a bit of random venting about one of the things that just irritates me in general: bus seats. Now, it’s not the obvious complaint that my big ol’ butt is too wide to fit comfortably – I can sit in the seats just fine, thank you. However, getting in and out of the seats is an issue, for anyone really, when the asshole sitting in front of you doesn’t put the seat back in the upright position after they get off the bus. You may be asking yourself how often I could find myself on a bus with reclining seats, but here in Korea, tour buses, the airport shuttle buses, intercity buses, and the buses we use for work all have seats that can be reclined. My other complaint is people sitting in the aisle seat that think you can get out between them and the seat in front of them – that is a super-small space on most buses.

So, the reclining seat…a comfort for long trips indeed. However, reclining bus seats are abused just about as much as airplane seats and have the same issues. Now, most people I know will check behind them on a bus before slamming their seat back, or at least only recline it a tiny bit so that they aren’t sitting up ramrod straight. I don’t know how many times I’ve had something in my lap (usually my backpack) become wedged between my body and the seat back because the jerkwad in front of me decided he had to slam his seat back as far as it would go. Ok, that’s fine, recline your seat like you own the bus. But when you get off the bus, at least have the common courtesy to PUT THE SEAT BACK. Oh, no? That’s too much to ask? Well, I’m sorry, do it anyway or I will hunt you down and break your kneecaps like a mafioso once I wedge myself out of the seat. I mean seriously, you have to know that your reclined seat lessens the space the person behind you has to work with and makes them feel like they’re doing the limbo to get off the bus, so why be a douche and leave your seat reclined when you get off the bus? It’s just plain rude. Koreans seem to be kings of doing this. I don’t know how many times I get on a bus and immediately return the seat that I sit in to its original position.

My other pet peeve about bus seats is that Koreans seem to think that pulling their feet in under their seat will give you room to squeeze out between them and the seat in front of them. Now, on some buses that have lots of leg room, this is fine, but on most (especially if the person in front of them is a recliner), there just isn’t the room. Now, sometimes you’ll have them attempt to turn sideways and try to move their legs out of the way. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. Now, I have a lot of junk in my trunk, so for me, it doesn’t usually work so well and they end up with a whole lot of white-girl booty in their faces. I actually had a woman one day think that pulling her legs in and trying to pull the cake box on her lap closer to her chest would give me room to get out…I just looked at her and said, “You’re going to have to move.” Seriously, even an anorexic person wouldn’t have been able to fit between her and the seat in front of her with the cake box on her lap – there was maybe 2 inches between her knees and the seat back, not to mention the fact that there would have been butt being rubbed all over the cake box. This was on the company bus going to work in the morning, so maybe lack of coffee or whatever could be blamed, but I doubt it. If I’m sitting by the aisle and the person next to me needs out before I’m at my stop, I always stand up and let them out – this slows the flow of people exiting much less than waiting for the person to crawl all over me to get to the aisle. Sometimes I’m not fast enough, though, and they end up crawling over my lap to get out anyway – quick like ninjas they are sometimes.

OH! I just thought of a bonus bus rant. Charter buses like I’ve been talking about aren’t meant to have people standing in the aisles – they just aren’t very wide. However, many of the intercity buses and the buses for my employer often will have people standing in the aisle. This is fine…stand all you want, but at least make an attempt to move out of the way when people are getting off the bus. I really, really hate having to rub all up on people to try to get to the door to get off the bus when the aisle is packed full of people.

So yeah, there’s my bus rant. If people just had a bit more common sense or common courtesy, the world could be a much more convenient place in which to ride a bus.