With Melbourne being rated as the world’s most liveable city, as well as the friendliest, you’d be forgiven for thinking the town could rest on its laurels for a bit. But Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle still has a bone to pick with Melburnians – particularly with all those profoundly annoying things they do in public.
As the city’s population soars, Mayor Doyle kind of just wants everyone to be a little bit more courteous – “I think those small civilities that sometimes we lose in a very busy city are nevertheless worth preserving.“
Among his biggest pet peeves? “Don’t jump on your mobile phone and shout all about your private life when I’m sitting next to you on the No.1 tram home to South Melbourne. I’m not interested, and neither are the other 48,000 people in that packed tram” simultaneously bringing up both one of life’s richest sources of schadenfreude and the growing infrastructure issues his office faces.
Mayor Doyle also cited his personal distaste for people who refuse to stay left when walking on footpaths, drawing the kind of reaction from this writer that can only be expressed properly through the majesty of GIFs.
But why merely stop there? We’re on a roll here, people. And leaving it there would be mad, MAD I tell you.
Here are some other behavioural traits of others that are the bane of my bitter, bitter existence.
– People who stop dead in their tracks whilst walking in the middle of a footpath. Just because its uncontrolled doesn’t mean there’s not an order to things. Pull the fuck over.
– People who only indicate right at traffic lights after they’ve pulled to a complete stop. Suck it up, admit your error, and drive an extra block like the rest of us stubborn fools.
– People who don’t wait for people to finish exiting a train/tram before they push their way on. Seriously? You can’t wait the extra few seconds? That mildly damp seat and hanging scent of someone’s lunchtime takeaway dumplings is still going to be there in 10 seconds. Wait your turn, dickhead.
– On rainy days, those baffling fools who walk under cover whilst still carrying open umbrellas. You have brought your own form of shield from the rain, thereby forfeiting your need to use existing cover. I’m wet, and I’m cold, and your portable Hills Hoist is flailing dangerously around eye-level. Get out of the freaking way.
– Anyone who assumes someone else has already pressed the pedestrian crossing button. Though this isn’t so much a peeve as it is a perverse joy, as there’s something just so devilishly right about seeing a group of people have everything they understand about life ripped away from them when an instruction they were expecting doesn’t arrive. That half stutter-step they take at the point they assumed the Green Man would appear?
Photo: Darrian Traynor via Getty Images.
via Herald Sun.
