i had a dude walk up to me and say “never just take unsolicited advice”

possibly the best advice i ever got. total mindfuck though

hopped on the local metro transport at like 6am. I sit down and try to not make eye contact with anyone and the smell hits me first.

dude like two seats down is passed the fuck out, dick in hand, legs stretched out, and he’s just shitting all over himself and the seat.

security comes over and tries to wake him up. they get loud and kinda rough with the guy. no response. they check for pulse. he ded. he big ded.

dude must have died mid stroke at some point in the morning commute and his bowels released soon after.

drugs are bad m’kay.

Back when I was in college I road the bus every day. Nothing even remotely as crazy as most of the comments here describing happened that I witnessed on those hundreds of bus rides There was the dude wearing a parka when the heat index was over 100, or the guy weeping holding a bouquet while heading into a residential area and those are honestly not that interesting because shit happens but I do have one story:

One fairly quiet bus ride I was seated in some of the sideways seats near the front and a lady seated across from me was reading a newspaper. My eyes are drifting as I’m listening to a podcast and suddenly I realize on the front of the paper this lady is reading is a photo of my dad. I asked her “excuse me, could I look at that paper quickly? That’s a photo of my dad there and I want to see what he’s been up to to get in the paper but hasn’t told me” and it turns out he helped run a Wikipedia edit-a-thon event at a local library to help encourage new contributors.

On a trip to San Francisco, the quintessential “gay mecca” of the USA I was on a bus making my way over towards Haight area (then planning to go visit Castro street aka the actual gayest part of San Francisco) there were a group of men on the bus going on a bigoted rant specifically about homosexual men ruining the country and going to hell and all that fun stuff on the LGBTQ+ agenda.

Like, I’d expect to hear that kind of stuff in the middle of Oklahoma’s rural hellscape (sans the bus part). But in San Francisco of all places?

One morning when I got on the Stockholm metro there was a guy, bombed out of his mind, he had tossed his jacket in the middle of the floor, and was messing about with bottle caps with water and syringes.

No one made a sound (this is normal in the Stockholm rush hour), and I reached out through the SL app chat feature to inform the security center about the situation

I told them that a poor guy on the train clearly needed help, didn’t speculate, but informed them about what I could see, told them what train it concerned and where on the train the guy was and gave a description of him.

Two stops later two security guards boarded the train and quickly lead him out, no screaming or disruption at all.

I don’t know what happened to the guy after that, but I was careful to stay neutral yet concerned for the guy’s health, and I hope he finally got the help he needed if not wanted at the time and is doing much better now.

Public transport and living in a apartment made me really dislike people. Its enough with one weirdo to destroy a good nights sleep or a public transport journey for everyone.

Some humans are pretty much animals and just do what they want without any thoughts about others.

I have been sitting in a tram that emergency breake’d. It was all seriously fast: Ring of the warning bell (like an overgrown alarm clock) towards the driver of the car, and next thing was that I was leaning over an old lady sitting in the opposite side. They accellerated like a snail on dope, but breaking was applying ACME Insta Stop.

Guy had a baseball bat with nails on the crowded greenline in Boston. Pretty sure it was used for holding multiple plastic bags on his shoulder, but it was still kinda freaky

Idk if this counts as crazy but one day a guy went up to me and said “hey I’m about to smoke meth. Its probably going to smell so you can change seats if you want to.” And then I did and that was basically it.

I watched a guy chug a bottle of orange Listerine, ramble incoherently for ten minutes, then proceed to have uncontrollable diarrhea all over the seat before getting off the train.

hoo boy have I got a story for you!

It’s my first day heading to work after moving to a new apartment. I get on the bus around 7 AM. My guide dog (Guide Dog 1 from a previous post) is under my seat with her head poking out a bit into the aisle.

A few stops down route and this drunk lady gets on and sits right next to me. I’m a little annoyed but it’s public transit and a lack of personal space is par for the course.

“Oh, a doggy,” she slurs in Spanish, attempting to pet my dog’s head. Unfortunately she misses and starts petting my leg instead. I jump up and relocate to another seat, but not before telling the woman “Please don’t touch my dog, and don’t touch me either.” The rest of the ride she’s groping the air in the general direction of my dog.

Some other anecdotes in no particular order:

• Someone in the back of the bus screaming “It’s my birthday WOOOOOOOO!”
• A lady ranting at the driver to stop for a good 20 minutes because she has to pee
• A smelly bum falling asleep on my shoulder

I have to mention a time where I was probably the strange one: after the lockdowns ended but while masking was still common, I would wear a full respirator with face shield, basically a gas mask, while on the bus. My rationale is that a normal paper or cloth mask stops the wearers germs from getting out but doesn’t do so well at stopping them from getting in. I can’t see who is or isn’t wearing a mask, so I’m going to wear something that WILL protect me against the non maskers.

EDIT:

Oh and the time my bus got cut off by another bus and the driver got out and started yelling at the other driver. I was already within walking distance of my destination, so I just noped off the bus before it could escalate.

EDIT 2:

same bus as the drunk dog petter, this guy would get on at the stop after mine. I called him Mr. Bucket because he always carried this large white plastic bucket that smelled absolutely foul.

EDIT 3:

I get on a bus (different city) while wearing a lanyard with a name badge on it. I forget to slip the lanyard under my shirt, and this lady leans in and grabs the lanyard to examine the card.

Her: “You’re from [name of place on the lanyard]?”

Me, unable to lie at this point: “…yes”.

On my once a year trip on mass transit, someone came on, so hammered/high they proceeded to vomit up the thickest, most gooey, florescent yellow-green puke I have ever seen. They did this 2 or 3 times before getting off and stumbling home.

I have no idea what was in their stomach, but it for sure wanted out. I just felt for the poor soul having to clean it up.

A drunk squaddie explaining social security and taxes to his fellow squaddies in a broad Glaswegian accent.

Although I suppose the craziest thing was getting out of King’s Cross while it was on fire, on a train that wasn’t supposed to stop.

Saw a guy on the SF Muni simultaneously solving two Rubik’s cubes, one in each hand. By the time he got off at the next station he was done with both of them.

Nothing that crazy I guess, but two events I remember:

• A small fire broke out next to the tracks and the train driver actually stopped the train and got out to extinguish it

• A train busker played so loudly and terribly that a group of random passengers got together to shove him out of the train at the next station.