I have lived in Singapore for about three months, so this might not be a good representation of Singaporean buses. But there are some things that some people do that mildly annoy me.
This is perhaps the most baffling phenomenon. You’ll see a bus that looks absolutely packed from the outside, but if you could fly a drone to the back, you’d find a literal vacant wasteland of empty floor space.
People here seem to have a magnetic attachment to the EZ-Link reader. There’s this unspoken fear that if they move more than three meters away from the exit, they will be trapped on the bus forever, destined to ride the loop back to the interchange. It results in a “clog” at the neck of the bus while the driver screams, “Move in! Move in please!” into the intercom with the weary soul of a man who has said it 4,000 times that week.
2. The “Exit Pole Campers”
This is the advanced version of the loiterer. These are the folks who treat the yellow box near the exit doors like a VIP lounge. They will wrap their arms around the stanchion pole and enter a deep meditative trance.
When the bus actually stops and ten people are trying to squeeze past them to alight, they don’t move. They just perform a slight “torso twist”—a 15-degree rotation—as if that magically creates enough space for a person with a backpack to teleport through them.
3. The “Aisle Seat Anchor”
Ah, the classic power move. By sitting on the outer seat and leaving the window seat empty, they create a psychological barrier. Most Singaporeans are polite (or shy) to a fault; they would rather stand for 45 minutes on a shaky bus than tap a stranger on the shoulder and say, “Excuse me, can I sit inside?”
The “Anchor” knows this. They stare intensely at their phone, pretending to be deeply invested in a Shopee sale or a TikTok dance, hoping that if they don’t make eye contact, you won’t notice the empty space next to them. It’s a game of “Commuter Chicken.”
4. The “Bag Passenger” (The High-Tier Offense)
As you noted, this is rarer because it’s the one thing that will actually get you “death stares” from the aunties. Placing a luxury handbag or a grocery plastic bag on its own seat during peak hour is the ultimate sign of social defiance.
In Singapore, we call this “chope-ing” a seat, but usually, that’s reserved for hawker centers with packets of tissue. Doing it on a bus is considered a high-level “Main Character Syndrome” move.