KEY POINTS:
The pregnant woman toddled down the aisle of the nearly-full bus and looked for somewhere to sit. She spotted what looked like a free spot, headed towards it, then stopped short. On the free seat sat a bag; on the seat next to it, a young woman plugged
into her personal sound system and the notion that her rights to space and pleasure were paramount.
As the bus took off, the pregnant woman continued to stand. It required a dirty and prolonged look from a gobsmacked passenger who'd started to get to her feet (me) for Missy Seat Hogger to begrudgingly bundle her little bag on to her lap and let the woman sit down.
Her actions and attitude spoke volumes - they hollered: "It's all about me."
She has company. The growing band of seat reservers dump the smallest of bags or the flimsiest of folders on to adjoining seats so they are not forced to graze elbows or thighs with other human beings - even when the bus starts to fill up. Others' needs don't merit consideration; it's not about them.
Whatever the psychology behind the on-the-bus barrier building - a disturbing shift away from collective thinking or a slip in the standards parents demand of their children - it just comes across as plain bad manners. Once, there would have been a cheerful stampede to offer a seat to a pregnant woman.
The bus, you see, is a microcosm of society. A place where every skerrick of human behaviour can be studied in the 10 or so stops between the Surrey Cres shops and Auckland's city centre. And if you are a regular traveller, over time you notice trends.
As you lurch between the stops, you observe ever fewer young people standing up for older citizens and more and more passengers who slam down their small change and grunt their destination in the vague direction of the driver. No thank yous, no pleases, no eye contact.
You see passengers sitting on the inside seats stand up at their stops, then barge past the people on the outside without an "excuse me". And you see people sit while mothers struggle with kids, bags and strollers that just don't seem to fold up when the bus pulls up.
The worst incident, though, breached the barrier between bad manners and criminal behaviour. The bus was only two stops into its journey from the city to West Auckland when a young woman approached the driver and reported - firmly but politely - that the man next to her was masturbating. What's more, he'd done it before.
While the driver struggled to comprehend what she was saying (English was his second language) the appalled passengers all turned to the smartly-dressed man in his 30s or 40s. He then high-tailed it off the bus and disappeared into the crowd outside SkyCity.
There was a collective sense of outrage and abhorrence left in the bus; a sense that if we'd had the opportunity, we would have grabbed this guy and delivered him to justice - or something else.
"I would have given him an ear-bashing," said one woman sitting behind me.
"I would have bashed him." said her large teenage son.
But because the bus is a microcosm, you also see good behaviour - the St Paul's College boys who offered their seats to older passengers and the Auckland Girls' Grammar students who inevitably shout "Thanks driver" as they get off the bus.
Before you write off these observations as the ramblings of a grumpy, fusty baby boomer, even 20- and 30-something colleagues bemoan a general decline in manners.
The question is, does it really matter?
I think it does. Manners denote respect and this makes us feel good about ourselves and the society we live in. It's a major ingredient of the glue that binds us together.
But don't let the slide in manners put you off using the bus which, after all, can be the best show in town. And you can have a bit of fun baiting the seat hoggers.
Whenever I see them, I've taken to making a beeline for them and politely asking them to move their paraphernalia so I can sit down. It's public transport, after all.
* Fiona Barber is an Auckland journalist and public transport user.
