June 18th, 2013
For those of you who don’t frequent the Washington-Boston Amtrak corridor, the second car on each train is designated as the “Quiet Car.” Cell phone use is prohibited and conversation is limited to library-level. When it works, the Quiet Car is a thing of beauty and justifies every bit of Joe Biden’s love for subsidized rail travel.
But sometimes people in the quiet car ignore the rules. In my own limited experience, slightly less than half of the time, some asshat decides that he needs to jabber away on his phone. (It’s almost always a guy.) And what happens then is interesting.
Because the Quiet Car is a relatively new invention–I don’t think it’s even ten years old–and because it’s unique in the world of mass transit, there’s no set code of mores governing the enforcement of behavior. If you’re on the phone when a conductor passes through the car, he or she will loudly tell you to shut your trap. Which is awesome, and also efficacious. Confronted by a conductor, people always comply with the rules. But the conductors don’t come through very often. So the law of the quiet car is really in the hands of passengers.
I’ve seen two modes of response to infractions.
In the first, an annoyed passenger chastises the scofflaw by declaring, loudly but to no one in particular, “QUIET CAR!” In my own experience, this happens very rarely–maybe a fifth of the time. And its effectiveness is minimal. Most times, the guy on the phone just keeps talking.
Much more often, the first infraction incites a behavioral revolution. The car might have been totally silent for two hours, but 10 minutes after one guy pulls out his phone and takes a call, lots of other people do the same. And once this happens, it’s Lord of the Flies and the rules requiring silence are demolished for the duration of the trip.
I wonder what some genuine research into the behavioral system of the Quiet Car might show. I’d certainly be interested in the most effective (legal) way to enforce compliance with the mores of the car. It isn’t the most pressing question in the world, of course, but I suspect that much dumber subjects have been the grist of sociology dissertations.
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This is why I miss you. : )
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See: James Q. Wilson and broken windows.
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I feel like this is a “Bueller, Bueller” moment directed at me but I actually know fairly little about micro-interactions, norms, etc, even though my department was known for this sort of thing in the 60s and 70s (with Garfinkel, etc).
Ben’s response hints at a solution though, which is altruistic punishment (ie, vigilantism).
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Sometimes you just gotta go “Bus Uncle” on them:
— http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114962497534572979.html
— http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RSHziqJWYcM
Years ago, financial blogger Barry Ritholtz used his personal blog largely as a means for shaming awful passengers on the Long Island R.R. It was passive-aggressive, but very amusing:
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/writing/lirr_commuter_from_hell/
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I avoid the quiet car like the plague. But if there are no seats anywhere else I have been exiled there. When so exiled I have no compunction in following its rules which are dictactorial and unmanly. I feel that people who voluntarily choose the quiet car are asking for trouble.
Ben June 18, 2013 at 6:59 pm
I am a quiet car confronter. The first time someone does it, I wait til they are off the phone, and then I tell them: This is the quiet car. If you want to take a call, you have to leave. Most of the time the offending individual is apologetic, or at least fakes it.
It has only once caused a clash, at which point I insisted he leave, a little louder, and was joined by a chorus of agreement. Which was rather reassuring. And he left.