Graceful Courtesy

Each morning, hordes pound across the intersection from the Caltrain station to a single-car MUNI train. Everyone manages to cram in, but not everyone gets a seat.

I've seen young men sitting who have offered their seat to women. Unless the woman is old or pregnant, the offer almost always gets rejected. Even if the guy gets up anyway, the woman won't take the seat. It's a matter of pride along the lines of "My business shoes may be damn uncomfortable, but I'm still going to stand rather than be patronized to."

What does happen, though, is that in the mornings, when we're all crammed in, the seats tend to be occupied by women and men are more likely to be standing. It took me awhile to figure out why it wasn't an even distribution. Men are walking into the train, scoping out how crowded it's going to be and opting to just not take a seat. If they already have one, they'll get up and move away from it toward another part of the train.

I'm not sure how I feel about this socially, but it's certainly good manners graciously applied by some MUNI riders.