Rules of the seat-acquisition game on the Overground

There is a whole other type of player on the x-country trains: the seat-reserver. These people allocate themselves an assigned seat number for their journey when they buy their tickets. This is a completely free-of-charge option available to all users of the UK rail network, but only a select few are ruthless enough to go through with it and wield those little cards against their fellow man.

Some of the saddest, most unnecessary arguments I've ever witnessed on public transport involved seat-reservers. On one journey, my girlfriend was sat next to a stranger, and with me having failed to find a seat I was stood nearby. A seat-reserver showed up and demanded the seat of the woman next to my girlfriend. This woman was somewhat old and did not want to give up her seat. An argument broke out (a polite British white middle-class argument, mind you), and my girlfriend decided that she would give up her seat before shit started getting real.

In the meantime, the conductor had been summoned. By the time he arrived, these two women who had just been arguing were now sitting uncomfortably close to one another and attempting to mend the fence. Things had begun to calm back down, but the ensuing discussion with the conductor stirred everything right back up. It transpired that the seat-reserver's ticket had entitled her to my girlfriend's seat all along, and the older lady next to her needn't have worried. The two people made an awkward show of offering to swap seats with each other and declining.

The stakes on the cross-country battlefield are high. Fuck it up, and you're jammed against the toilet doors nose-to-nose with three strangers for the next several hours. It's no wonder some people feel tempted to reserve seats, but I've always felt quite strongly that able-bodied people asking other able-bodied people to move based on the authority of a small piece of card is a bit pathetic. Don't reserve yourself a seat unless you have a legitimate need to sit down.

All the time I'm thinking 'typical Londoners, they could have made that so much easier for that poor guy if they just held back for 2 seconds'

He got off at Canary Wharf minus the limp! I laughed for about an hour.

Not only talking about his subpar game (he didn't even know he could check windows), he introduced more players into the secret society of sit-down artists.

Pathetic.

Pub queues have similar social dynamics, as the queue is a lie and it works much the same way (unless the bar staff are very, very good at tracking punters) as the seat-acquision game. You're looking for the specific formations of people who've ordered or are just ordering, where the densest clusters are and so on, but you are not alone. There's another thirsty, strategy minded drinker taking the same tactics, game on.

Or being determined to get off the plane a bit earlier of being aggressive at baggage collection. The petty gains don't begin to compensate for the energy loss, and the effect on your personality.

Over multiple rounds of play it's highly unstrategic. The only way to win is to identify losing games, and avoid playing them. I have built a habit where I always stand unless the carriage is practically empty, and then I never have to interact with the situation.

Generally English commuters are a respectful bunch: reserved, quiet, they let people off the train before trying to get on, there are still plenty of men (who want seats) who ignore it if ladies are standing. Celebrate it. It's nice not to live in Italy.

I do this every time I'm on an outbound 7 train in New York. The train runs first through a hipster/young area, then a number of distinct ethnic neighborhoods, and finally ends in Flushing (the city's second Chinatown). Needless to say, strategically standing next to certain people in seats is the way to go.