Travelling by train last weekend, I came across a not-so-surprising phenomenon. When seats have been booked by someone, there is a little slip of paper attached to the window. It says, “Please give this seat to passengers holding a reservation.” I did have one, but since there was a major jam of people in the area where ‘my’ seat was, I decided to take the nearest available one, and if someone having reserved the one I was sitting on showed up, I’d move over.
Then I noticed that all around me seats were reserved, but no one was sitting there, and all the people that came past looking for a seat didn’t take them. Because they were reserved (pun intended). But when you think about it, it’s really scary that we have been brainwashed to a degree that people are so scared of facing refusal or criticism they won’t even consider doing something remotely deniable.