Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you know you can react to a rude person like an adult, but you just choose to be petty instead?
It happens to the best of us.
OP and his girlfriend were visiting a friend out of town. They had a great visit, and then decided to grab a train back home.
After having gone through a rather difficult period in my life my gf told me last weekend that it was time for me to try and cheer up a little and let’s go to ‘Zwolle’, which is a Dutch town in the Netherlands. Just for a bit of sightseeing and maybe also to visit a friend of hers to return something she had borrowed for a while.
Well, we had a great day.
Plenty of things to see, nice atmosphere in the city and when we visited her friends place things really clicked. We were even invited to dinner which we happily accepted.
Having remembered seeing a supermarket not too far away I immediately suggested that we sponsor the wine and it was a pleasant evening.
We also discovered that this friend lived relatively close to a bus stop which made things all the more easy. We left around 20:00 and as luck would have it didn’t even have to wait for our train.
However, this train ride turned out to be nothing but absurd.
All of this played out in the Netherlands, conversations have obviously been translated.
On the train, they noticed a sign on their table stating they were in a cell phone free car.
At this time the train isn’t really crowded so we find a place to sit and end up on a “4 seater” as I like to call it: two benches with a small table in between near the window which provide room for 4 people.
We both go sit near the window and chatter a bit when we finally notice a weird pamphlet on the table reading something like “phone free compartment!” but neither of us gives it much thought.
They didn’t think much of it, and chatted most of the trip. As they drew closer to the next station, though, his girlfriend pulled up the transit app to see what platform they needed to meet their connection.
We chatter a bit until the next station is announced: the one where we need to get off and hop onto another train that will actually take us home.
My gf tells me that she’s going to check the schedule to see where we need to go and she grabs her phone.
I thank her and then I suddenly remember that I have read something about those flyers the week before, so I grab my phone to check a local newspaper.
Suddenly things got completely absurd…
OP picked up his phone, too, and that’s when the train’s conductor confronted them about using their phones.
“Madam, you need to put that phone away!”, someone calls out and before we know the conductor is standing next to us while addressing my gf.
We both look up surprised: “Why?”, she asks.
“This is a phone free zone, you’re not allowed to use your phone here. If you want to use your phone you need to go sit somewhere else”, he answers.
They asked where the rule came from and he explained, albeit rudely. So, they decided to have a little fun with him.
“What kind of idiot came up with that stupid idea?”, I ask him and it actually looks as if he took offense to my comment.
“This was thought up by two students who want to help improve the world”, the conductor answers, and adds, “Instead of looking at your phone all the time you could be interacting with other people which is also much healthier!”.
I look at my gf, she looks at me, I wink and tell the conductor: “You want me to talk to her? Everyone knows that talking to women is scary!”, which is almost immediately met with hard laughter behind us.
My gf retorts: “Yeah, I don’t want to talk to him, all I want to do is check the NS app to see what platform I need for getting my connection.”.
The man, however, was not interested in having fun.
“You’ll have to do that somewhere else, or you can could ask me (<= typoe!)”, the conductor answers.
“This is lousy customer service”, my gf retorts while this dude is starting to look angry.
He says, “It is what it is, either you two put your phones away or I’ll have to issue a fine”.
“Fine”, I snap while I put my phone away when I suddenly realize something.
I grin and once again wink at my gf while patting my phone which is now in my pocket. My patting also suddenly made her realize the obvious…
When the conductor wanted their tickets, though, he began to realize his error.
“Now that we got this out of the way, can I see your tickets please?”, the conductor asks.
“Nope!”, I tell him, “You just told me not to and I don’t want to risk getting fined”.
Now visibly angry he says, “What the heck is that supposed to mean? I did no such thing, you don’t have a ticket, is that it?”
I again pat my chest: “I don’t travel that often so I always purchase my tickets using the app. Which is on my phone, and you just told me that I can’t use it. So… I can’t show you my ticket.”.
The guy looks flabbergasted.
“uhm, no… this is different. You need to show me your ticket”, he says.
And OP’s girlfriend was quick to sniff out the “ruse.”
My gf chimes in: “So that you can write him a fine for using his phone? No thank you! You can’t apply the rules like you please, and you just clearly told us that we’re not allowed to use our phones.”
I continue: “And what guarantees do I have that you won’t just fine me later anyway? You obviously like to apply the rules as you please.”
The exited the train feeling pretty pleased with themselves, and it was pretty funny.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re now arriving at Arnhem station,” a voice suddenly says over the intercom.
“Oh, that’s my stop!” my gf says and gets up to walk towards the exit.
“Cool, mine too”, I say and follow her while ignoring the sputtering from the conductor.
We caught our connection in the nick of time (despite having to search for the platform) and that was the end of that weird ordeal.
They did follow up with the train company, but did not rat out the particular conductor.
Thing is… I did get a little upset over all that nonsense. Because this isn’t a common thing and as it turned out this “mobile free zone” is merely a test case that’s applied on a few local train routes.
I decided to complain to customer service but… also listened to my gf: we didn’t make it personal by calling out that specific conductor (“maybe he just had a really crappy day”) but we just complained about the whole ordeal.
Today we actually got an answer:
Dear customer,
We’re sorry to hear that you didn’t feel comfortable during your train ride and that you considered the “smartphone free” zone as a decrease in customer service. That was never the intent of this testcase: people are suggested not to use their phones but this is not something we enforce because, as you mentioned yourself, people may need to check their connections or may need to consult other news regarding their trip. For which we actually encourage the use of the NS app.
If someone did try to enforce this then we’d like to hear back from you.
NS Customer service.
We didn’t respond. Now my gf says that I probably should but… I dunno.
At least, not this time.
The top commenter thinks the concept is a bit weird.
There are a lot of questions, actually.
Even local people think it’s strange.
It’s pretty wild the conductor would try to enforce this.
This person agrees that OP should take it one step farther.
It’s one of those nice in theory things, I think.
We use our phones for so much more than just ignoring our partners, after all.
If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.