Stand clear of the closing doors, please

Oh, how I hate a crowded subway car during rush hour. Especially in summer, when waiting on a steaming platform does nothing to make my fellow passengers look or smell their best.

Of course, anyone would hate a packed subway car, a stranger's elbow in your face (I am not tall), an ipod blaring much too loudly through earphones, a giant tote bag poking you in the kidneys. But for me the more painful aspect is the utter lack of subway etiquette on display at these times. When the conductor says "step all the way in and stand clear of the closing doors," there is a reason for this. It is to allow as many of the passengers waiting the train as possible to actually board it. Stopping to hold a railing immediately inside the doors, imagining you can somehow flatten yourself to allow other people to pass you by, simply does not work. Furthermore, if you are tall, please, please don't stand 2 inches away and hover above me to hold on to a vertical pole in the middle of the car! You can easily reach the horizontal bars that run above the seats. I cannot. Show some courtesy for the smaller folk around you.

On the subject of the vertical pole, clearly nobody wants to grab it with their bare hands, and perhaps acquire this month's mystery urban virus. I get this. But at the same time, when there are 57 adults, many carrying laptop bags, occupying the same 3 square feet of space, sometimes you have to give up the leaning or arm-wrap-around and let some other people hang on to the thing! Carry Purell! I am a major germophobe myself, but sometimes, you just have to touch things you might not want to.(I will refrain from inserting the obvious Office catchphrase here).

It's no picnic packing into a massively overcrowded public transportation system, but a little manners could go a long way.