Szilárd VAJDA's blog

Public transportation, somewhere on a bus in Washington D.C. You swipe your SmarTrip card and you just bought yourself a 90 minutes ride. Awesome, really awesome! Lets be honest the price is  also quite affordable. Cool! What's next?

Once you bought your ticket you can use one seat if there are any available, right? No complaints, that's how things work on a bus. Your ticket gives you the right to use one seat, but [...] There is always a but, otherwise life would have no meaning at all. Many seats are occupied by over-weighted persons, hence they need two seats instead of one. Conflict: you bought yourself a ticket, but you can not get a seat because of these guys. They also bought the ticket, so they also have the right to get a seat, but you can not get yours because there is no space left.  

Two tickets were validated, to persons are in the bus, two seats available but only one guy manages to seat. Who is right? The guy who is over-sized and he has to use 2 seats, the guy who bought his/her ticket but can not manage to get the seat for which he/she payed the same amount of money as the over-sized people or [...] One might imagine the guy who payed his ticket might ask for his seat but offending the over-sized guy telling him/her: I need my seat because I payed for it! would also not solve the problem.  So here you are, another paradox, though I think everybody who has a valid ticket should be able to get ONE seat!

P.S. Please do not suggest to get another seat, because sometimes this situation does not apply as there are no free seats left! Usually I am not sitting at all, but I think it is not fair and rather unjust.

P.P.S. I do not want to offend over-weighted persons, it is not my intent at all but the facts are facts either you like it or not!