Dear cretin Mazda driver,
The pedal on the right makes the vehicle go faster. I realise you're an asian female and therefore combine a lack of spatial awareness with a natural timidity and total inability to make a conscious decision in real time without a peer support group, but that's not a good thing when it comes to driving a motor vehicle. How the hell did you ever get a licence? Is VicRoads employing asian testers who are slipping people through as ringers or for a few hundred bucks or something? Unless you're the one demographic who actually gets worse at a task with practice as opposed to better, if that's the level of competence you can demonstrate now then it must have been truly cringingly bad at the time.
Dear moron smokers outside the train station,
Every morning I look at your small knot of diehards clustered resentfully together away from the doors (although still not far enough, I reckon Epping would be good), puffing away at your little addiction. You really do represent the triumph of stupidity over every possible means of education and awareness about the many evils of smoking, and that some people can be counted on to intransigently stick to their beliefs no matter what proof or fact is offered. Luckily, the general demographic of the few remaining diehards (literally) is very much trending towards the mid to late 40s, indicating that you're probably the last generation that will generally somehow think that it's a good idea to progressively poison yourself to death. Personally I really couldn't care if you do by the way, as long as I don't have to pay for it or put up with it, but that does mean you can fuck well off away from the doors to carry on your filthy habit.
Dear lady at the train station,
If you waddle into the station at the speed of congealing treacle, stop spang in front of the ticket validator and block both access to both validators and the door itself, stand your roller bag up, put down your other two bags, find your handbag, open that and fish around for your purse, open that and myopically peer in search of your card, have about six goes at getting it to read, gingerly put the card back into your purse, put your purse back in your bag, pick up your other two bags, then take a moment to compose yourself for the Hurcelean task of getting your roller bag moving again, please do not be taken aback when I and the other people trying to make it to our train too tell you to get the fuck out of the way and shove past you.
Dear cute asian chick sitting opposite to me,
I don't care if you feel uncomfortable and keep wiggling around in your seat. You wore the mini skirt, your legs are going to get looked at - deal with this. I have my tablet in my lap as normal, so they're in my line of sight, and frankly I was going to be having a look anyway. Yes, I sat down next to you for a reason, but no, it wasn't so I could look peripherally at your thighs for fifteen minutes. I did that because I don't want to sit next to Kevin the boofy tradie who is about two and a half times your physical size and has a fucking huge toolbox with him. Or mad bag lady who apparently has something akin to hoarder syndrome going on and couldn't possibly go to work without her five bags, or the dickhead with the outsized headphones who has the whole I-hate-you-all thing going and thinks that listening to incoherent mumbled [c]rap at max volume is his little rebellion against the world.
Dear dude in the suit,
Yeah, it sucks when you don't get a seat, but everyone is blithely ignoring the death stares you are directing at everyone. Your inflated self of self-importance isn't going to make anyone give up their seat for you, suit or no suit. I think there's one about halfway down the carriage, next to Bruce the plumber if you're interested. Feel free to explain to the cute asian chick with the miniskirt why you're opting to stand even though you feel personally offended the little people beat you to all the good seats - it might help her feel better about me ogling her thighs.
Dear lady with the freaking huge bag,
Everyone is pretty tolerant within reason about baggage on the train, but please try to make some sort of basic, minimum effort about reciprocally caring less about the amenity of other people around you too. It's not mandatory, but when you quite obviously don't give a shit then that's why nobody else did this morning either. That's why it got kicked, trodden on, tipped over and generally knocked about for the last four stops into the loop, and no, I don't think anyone cared less that you were getting really pissed about it either. Personally I thought it was very funny, and I took the opportunity to give it a good swift punt on the way past.
Dear lady who hasn't yet figured out how a train pass works,
Myki cards have been mandatory for coming up on two years now. If you still haven't figured out how to use the system you must have spent one hell of a lot of time stuck inside train stations in the interim. Since you have apparently managed to miss every piece of consumer education ever delivered on the subject, and haven't managed to correlate the operation of the system to other similar examples like tap-and-pay credit cards, I will briefly explain. Myki is a contactless smart card. The card needs to be placed in close proximity to the card reader for the reader to detect the card. Holding it back about six inches is not going to work, or doing a fly-by with it that a Harrier pilot would be proud of. Nor will frantically semaphoring it repeatedly past the reader like a Parkinson's disease sufferer on crack improve operation. If you have worn all the finish off your normally green card and actually sanded the fucking thing back to the white substrate by rubbing against the reader pads, you are doing it wrong. Remove the card from your purse. I don't care that that it's supposed to work inside a purse, it won't when it's crammed in with half a dozen other smartcards that I can only presume you don't know how to make work either. Place the card against the pad. Do NOT FUCKING MOVE IT. The gates will open. Savvy?
Dear handbill waver and useless crap pushers in general,
I realise you have strategically positioned yourself at the top of the escalators so you can attempt to shove handbills/advertising/assorted crap into people's faces while they are effectively captive. What you need to realise is that people resent this and regard you as a nuisance at best, and someone to be told to fuck off and die/punched in the face at worst. Why the hell would you think I have any interest whatsoever in a chinese language newspaper? I am uncertain whether this represents a complete abdication of thought on your part or active idiocy, but either way I chose to exercise the TTFO option this morning. I will do this whenever you try to foist your crap on me. If you choose to make a living by annoying people, do not be surprised when people indicate that this annoys them.
Tram driver
It's nice to see that Yarra trams are now running some Z class trams on La Trobe St, the W class ones are getting a wee bit asthmatic really. You might need to recalibrate yourself a bit to the new traction though. I realise that getting a W class going is a balancing act between wheel slip, old traction motors, a dodgy manual resistor control system and actually getting somewhere today, but when you get into a Z1 with perhaps four passengers and use your normal drop-the-hammer launch method, the ride does become a wee bit harsh. The bloke a few seats away who was about to take a sip of coffee when you performed a blastoff that would have impressed NASA would no doubt agree with me.
Dear wacko tram commuters,
The tram stop on the corner of La Trobe and King streets got taken out about six months ago. It was widely advertised on the line for some time, and even if you only intermittently use trams, the complete and utter removal of all facets of the stop itself (you know, like fences, bollards, signs etc) should perhaps be a hint that THE FUCKING THING IS NO LONGER THERE. It doesn't matter how much you hiss and spit and jump up and down, the tram driver is not going to open the doors there, because funnily enough he has rules about letting people climb down into traffic and getting their dumb arses run over. You only options are to get off a block early or a block later and walk, deal with it.
Also, if you've just seen someone get up and pull the cord for the next stop, why the bleeding hell would you feel the need to do it again yourself? To make sure it's really well pulled? You just watched someone else do the same thing, you heard the buzzer go, and I presume your visual abilities are sufficient to see the light lit, even if your mental faculties to process the information are in some doubt. Do you also feel the need to push the button again for the pedestrian crossing, or the button for the lift despite it already being lit? Is this some sort of mild obsessive compulsive disorder, a lack of observational skill, or a complete lack of understanding of how the world works?
Ah, here is work. Where a new variety of strange people again will no doubt present themselves.
