People have always been helpful to me in New York. More than once, I've had a New Yorker go out of his way to get me headed in the right direction, muttering about tourists all the way. I fear that in the South, people can be more polite but less helpful.

I put Boston as the scariest place to drive for non-natives. People will pass you on the right in your same lane. Drivers sit at lights with one foot on the break and one foot on the accelerator.

Atlanta drivers most noted bad trait is the complete inability to merge. Going to the end of an on ramp and then stopping Does Not Work.

Let people that are inside get out, THEN enter the elevator.

I put Boston as the scariest place to drive for non-natives.

Let people that are inside get out, THEN enter

Doesn't this make sense as a general rule, no matter where you are? I mean, really.

3. Everyone gets inexplicably yelled at by cabdrivers, homeless people, and Duane Reade employees, so don't let that bother you.

True fact.

1. Be aware of your surroundings.

2. Don't impede other people.

These two do sometimes shove me over the edge. I don't mind you being lost and frustrated. I don't mind you chatting me up on the train, or even stumbling around because you don't have the sense to hold onto the pole right in front of you on the train.

But the mindless cell-phone chatting at volume, and standing directly in front of the Metro car door opening as if you don't even see that there are forty people trying to get off and the law of physics demands that you make way (even if basic survival is not motivation enough).

These things? bug.

1. Be aware of your surroundings.

2. Don't impede other people.

But I did follow those two rules (mostly because, in fact, I am lazy; I want to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible and with minimum effort, and nothing enrages me more than people who Impede The Flow--Hec and I are as one on this), and I still got yelled at. Mostly at crowded food service counters, where a multitasking cook or barista handed me the wrong thing and then screamed at me in front of everyone for not having corrected them while they were in the middle of making it.

Which made me want to say, Dude, you were making six things at once, at least two of which looked kind of like what I ordered! How was I to know? And wouldn't you have yelled at me just as much if I'd interrupted you in mid-making? You're making me want to take my money and go away, asshole!

But, instead, I just cried, which was no doubt a gross tactical error.

eta: Everyone gets inexplicably yelled at by cabdrivers, homeless people, and Duane Reade employees, so don't let that bother you.

See? I'm a freak. The only person in NYC who didn't inexplicably yell at me was homeless and visibly crazy.

we generally are good about pedestrians.

If they're aware of your existence.

The one rule of pedestrianism is eye contact. I generally won't even cross at a green light if I'm not sure the oncoming car sees me.

Don't impede other people.

Maybe I lived too long in Brooklyn, but the two things that bug me most here in "friendly" California are based on this:

1) The standing in front of the subway doors even if it is not your train on the platform. And I mean right in front, so you have to go around people and get on to the train from the side. I board at what is the first stop for the majority of lines, so the idea that people are worried that they won't get a seat if they cede their place at the door (the only justification for this that I can see) boggles my mind. At first, I would loudly say excuse me until they moved, but I have given up.

2) The fact that people won't get up to allow you to get to the window seat. They turn their bodies and swing their feet into the aisle, but since the seats are so close together and there is effectively a wall in front, it is really hard to get into your seat without bumping the person. And then they get all annoyed. This is so common that when I get up for someone, they are seriously shocked and amazed. I am so ready to say "If you can't be bothered to get up, don't be bothered to get annoyed because I accidently bumped you."

anyone yelling at me from a car is just giving me an excuse to yell back and get out some of my slightly supressed hostility. In other words, I welcome it.

anyone yelling at me from a car is just giving me an excuse to yell back and get out some of my slightly supressed hostility. In other words, I welcome it.

hahah! As with other things, we are the same!

(Although I haven't really been yelled at too much here at all.)

Oh, megan, the window seat dogs in the manger make me nuts. One nice thing about having a toddler on the bus is that, on the rare occasions that somebody else doesn't jump up and offer us their seat, virtually the entire bus will turn around and give the dog in the manger the stinkeye until s/he moves all bags, backpacks, wayward limbs and other impediments and lets us sit. It's apparently a pretty toxic stinkeye, because the dog under its spell doesn't even dare to utter that homicidally irritating huffy little sigh that always happens when I force my way past them sans Matilda.