Why you shouldn't eat on public transport

What's the weirdest/smelliest/most disgusting thing you've ever seen someone eat on public transport?

Elise's experience

“Oh my gosh Charlotte, I think I’m going to hurl,” said my sister Elise, when I met her at Bank station last week. “You’ll never guess what the guy sitting next to me on the tube was eating…”

It was something fishy, something with tentacles, and something which should never, ever be eaten in confined spaces… tinned squid. Oh yes. This individual slurped a whole can of the stuff between Old Street and Bank (a four minute journey), stinking the carriage out as he went. I even detected a whiff of it on Elise’s coat.

I’ve never understood why people eat on public transport; especially the tube, where the air smells of misery and a bitten-into-apple turns brown in five seconds flat. Besides, you get glared at for sneezing when on London transport, so how someone could pluck up the courage to open a fishy can is beyond me. I wish that I, like squid man, cared so little about what the world thought of me… I’d suck mints loudly, play my music at the volume it was intended for, lean over people to reach The Metro, and maybe take off my shoes for a bit of a breather.

My experience

My story isn’t half as shocking as Elise’s, but I did once see a woman peel the lid off an Activia yoghurt and attempt to eat it whilst balancing in the middle of a very wobbly tube carriage. Most of it ended up on her shoe, and I remember thinking, ‘you must be so outrageously hungry to warrant such behaviour’. But at least it wasn’t an offensive smell. Apparently our Facebook and Twitter users have much more haunting stories…

Your experience

@sulineats saw a woman eat ‘a full fried chicken dinner on the bus yesterday’; @therubyslippers was sat next to someone eating ‘raw garlic cloves from a brown paper bag’ (she had to change carriages due to the smell); @sarahspangle witnessed a business-looking man eating ‘The Metro! At 7:30am. They were reading it and started ripping pages to munch on’; @LyndaDaboh saw ‘BBQ ribs and sticky fingers on the bus’; and @lessybella couldn’t help but stare at the man ‘eating a cold teriyaki chicken ready meal, with fingers’.

As for Facebookers, poor old Claire Wood had to endure ‘fresh crab claws on a bus in the middle of summer’; Diane Gyves saw someone eat ‘pigs trotters with the hair still on them’ (they even ‘gave the toes a good suck’); Deborah James had a man '...eating a banana right in my ear whilst on a squashed train. He was so close I could smell it and hear him chewing on the mush like a hungry caterpillar'; and Nigel Tabb can’t think of anything worse than ‘a First Great Eastern sandwich’. Teehee.

But the winner has to be @tmw1000, despite the fact that her experience didn’t even happen on public transport. What would you have done in her position?

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen somebody eat on public transport? Or are you guilty yourself? Talk to us in the comments box below…

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