I grabbed my seat on my morning train commute to work, one hour of travel time both ways is something I've gotten used to over the years.
Today I grabbed one of the window seats, a few station after a young dude sat next to me, I didn't take too much notice of him as I was on my phone checking my emails and Facebook.
However after a few stations I started to notice that he was swaying from side to side, I looked at him and noticed that he looked really tired. He had messy hair, panda eyes and looked like he hadn't shaved for a few days.
He was barley staying awake, and as I was just about to get back onto checking my phone, I saw him closing his eyes and gone to sleep. Cool, so now he will get his rest and I'll carry on with reading my emails… except then he started to lean toward me…
I was trapped! So I pressed up against the window, but even with the extra room I put between myself and him, he was still slowly leaning towards me. What do I do? Do I wake him? Do I make some noise? Or just gently push him away? These options were flying through my mind as, I was being put on a timeline before he eventually he lwill be leaning on me sleeping.
Somehow at that moment I coughed, I didn't know if that was a reflex or a natural reaction, but that cough did the trick. He opened his eye and realised that he was leaning and corrected his posture.
However, since he was so tired he fell asleep soon after and started to lean again, and every time he got close I would cough. We repeated this routine all the way to the city, where I got off and gave him the window seat, so he could lean on the window instead.
Now that I think about it, I should have just traded seats with him from the beginning and he would have gotten a better sleep.