#80 🛩️ Say what you’ll do, and do what you SAY 🎩

Journal 📖
On a train, people have little in common but a destination. While people do make a show of conforming to the etiquette of small spaces, not everyone interprets such etiquette equally. Or even knows about it.
There’s no handbook for this.
What I feel must be true is that there is a handbook (or some modern, digital equivalent) for how to be a train conductor.
While I’m unsurprised at the frequent breaches of social mores in the ecosystem of the carriage, what does surprise me, from time to time, is the demeanour of the conductors. Some are aggressively certain of protocol; others appear mildly bewildered by it.
This might be the unintended consequence of going mostly cash-free on trains in the wider Wellington region. Commuters are now required to use their bright red Snapper cards, preloaded with money, to tag on and off the train. Punching tickets and collecting cash used to be much of a conductor’s job.
Nowadays, the conductors can seem a little lost. Who’s running the train? I wonder. Perhaps they’re wondering the same thing.
