The Bus Lottery

Just a thought I had on the bus today. When you get on a bus and there are a couple seats left available what influences where do you sit? Next to the white guy wearing a shirt and tie glancing nervously but aimlessly around or the latino skin coloured guy who is listening to some music and is reading an A4 sheet of paper?

I chose the latino guy because he looked less bothered and that he was less likely to be fidgeting about.

I chose wrong. He smelt really bad. I had the impression that he had cooked curry a couple of days ago wearing the same outfit and decided that a quick rinse over with some deodorant was adequate to hide this hideous smell.

My next dilemma was how do I go about changing seats without being to obvious and offending him? (I don’t know or care about the bloke, so should this be a problem?!). I decided to stay seated and pulled my scarf around my mouth and nose looking for other seats. I figured that an acceptable excuse to change seats would be to switch to a window seat, this is a common occurrence amongst London commuters. Luckily this opportunity came only a few stops down the line.

But my thought is, how do I pick my seat in the future?