Why are people treating me...weird?

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Are people not just normally very anti-social on public transport?

I used to get trains often, and people would standard plug themselves in to an ipod or book, avoid eye contact and avoid sitting beside people...

Maybe that's just Northern Ireland though, I notice you can always tell when there is an American or Canadian on the train, because they tend to be very talkative compared to us Northern Irelanders...

Judging books by the covers.

1, 2 & 3 all are earmarks for attracting attention....in fact you can exude all three simultaneously.

Likely, the attire is the giveaway because of the nature,i.e.quick response.

People, including myself, size up our surroundings. We have a tendency to put people in boxes. I saw a man in Army fatigues walking in a mall, up to the second floor & and back down, up again and down, not really shopping, not looking for someone, but walking quickly in a nervous posture. The 'look' was not making eye contact, and the immediate thought was mental illness..... watch out. Locally (at a different time) there was a man in a pet shop that stabbed a patron to death at the checkout counter. The victim just looked at him the wrong way and his checkout was his last purchase ever.....

The way I dress can elicit a whole gamut of responses. In a suit commands respect, but in work clothes an entirely different effect.... (it's humorous in a way.)

Try an experiment: Walk around in a suit like a million dollar attorney and watch what happens.

Last edited by Mdyar on 29 Nov 2011, 7:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

I haven't really been on a lot of public transportation. I've rode the bus a few times before we moved here, where there is no public transportation. People seemed nice. You have to remember that I'm in the very deep south, and here people expect other's to speak to them. So, even if you sit down beside a total stranger, you are expected to at least smile and nod, and preferable say something along the lines of "Hey, how you?" Down here where I live, people are expected to have social interaction with every freaking person we run across.

Frances

Well howdy neighbour!

that could be kinda nice for nt folk

maybe its the warm weather, sounds friendly

I'm used to it and expect everyone to act that way. I visited up North before and probably just freaked a lot of people out with the way I'd speak to everybody. It also freaks out a lot of Northerners who move down here. Everybody does it.

My husband will run into the grocery store to get a gallon of milk and when he goes in, he speaks to whoever he knows thats running a register (Hey girl! Where you been? Ain't seen you in a while! You still in school?), speaks to the guy sweeping the floor (Whats up my man? Know anything good?) these people always speak back to him and there is a little give and tkae there as well, then has a conversation in line at the register (You ain't been at our house in I don't know how long! They keeping you busy with them two jobs you got?) then has to go over and see the manager, Mr Sammy, and have a long football conversation with him (I'm not even going to attempt to type out an example of that one. They both get very animated when they talk about the games, and once, Mr Sammy even almost fell out of his wheelchair!). It will take a good 15 minutes just to go in the store that isn't crowded, no lines, and get one gallon of milk. That's considered "speaking" not "talking to" which he sometimes does too, and he's gone a good hour then.

I must admit, I do it too. But mine isn't always appropriate. If you don't speak to people, they think you're wierd. If I speak to people, they know I'm wierd.

Frances

One of my ex's had the same problem. he always wore a trench coat he won on ebay for 99 cents. He always wore it because he felt it was part of him and who he is. But people around him would act like he is some creep and not want to go near him. I thought that was stupid of all those people and told him to stop worrying about it and who cares what they think. Where we lived, people didn't wear those coats. But he would complain about it and say how "ret*d" it is what people think about him because of the coat and how they act. So I told him to quit wearing it and he said it be "ret*d" because it's who he is and he wasn't going to change that. I told him he could still wear it but just don't wear out in public, only wear at home or around his family and friends and he still said it was "ret*d" so I told him to stop complaining then or learn to not care about what people think. It's one of my pet peeves about people complaining about things that can be fixed but don't do it.


I try not to judge people anymore for judging because I realize now that judgments can come from experience so they end up with critical opinions. People go by patterns so if someone has been assaulted by someone who had on a trench coat or knew someone who use trench coats to steal items in them or used a trench coat to just hide weapons or they just kept hearing about bad stuff on the news and every criminal that committed a crime had on a tench coat. So people are going to try and be cautious when they see a trench coat wearer. I was never scared of the trench coat because one, I knew him and two, I was ignorant about the stigma of trench coats. Even if I was still aware, I still might not have judged him or get nervous. But him hanging out with the wrong people, does fit the trench coat stereotype. Sometimes his friends do things that were wrong like smoking pot and he still hang around them as they be doing it so if he is wearing his trench coat as they are doing it, he is feeding into the stereotype about trench coat wearers being criminals. He just thought it was "ret*d" to not hang out with the wrong crowd and get in trouble with the law just because he is with them when they were breaking the law and he wasn't so I told him if he ever gets arrested, I am not bailing him out because I will not waste my money of he is going to be doing that.

People look at me probably because I'm shaking, staring out the window and sitting in a disabled seat. I wear a military coat too. Actually, it's more like a BDU style jacket with sewn on real RAAF patches on it.