People in Paris have been given with a special manual to encourage civility when using the metro.
Paris’ public transport body released the manual for the “modern traveller” which breaks down behaviour into four categories: "helpfulness", "courtesy", "manners" and "politeness", drawn up from among more than 2,000 suggestions from the general public.
The "manners" section invites Parisians to help out lost tourists "in bermuda shirts with a metro map in one hand and the other hand in their hair".
"It's worth losing two minutes of your time for a good cause if only to hear the (foreign) passenger struggle to pronounce (the metro stops) 'Trinité d'Estienne d'Orves' or 'La Motte Piquet-Grenelle'.”
"Helpfulness" is defined as "holding the door open to the person behind you. In life, never miss an opportunity to exchange a pretty glance."
The "heads down tribe" are invited to put aside their smart phones for one minute and discover how much more gratifying it is to help older people.
"Politeness" includes "not only using a handkerchief to wave someone off on the platform" – but keeping one's germs to oneself.
Passengers are invited to not "provoke a duel with the cavalier who just squashed your toes by mistake" and "like a king penguin, to keep one's arms by one's sides on very hot days and grab the bottom of the post, not the very top" to avoid spreading body odour.
Last year, France's state-owned railway operator announced the creation of almost 3,000 "polite police" with tough new powers to eradicate bad manners on the nation's intercity trains.
