City life affords few greater pleasures than a seat on a crowded subway. While everyone else bumps and grinds to the spasms of the speeding train, you sit snug between two strangers with a magazine on your knees. The humid stench of morning breath wafts harmlessly overhead; the intercom warnings of “unlawful sexual conduct†aren’t quite so creepy. And if a pregnant or elderly person boards the train, a subway seat affords you an even better satisfaction: selflessly standing up.
via Geoff Dyer, Zoe Heller, Gary Shteyngart on Sitting vs. Standing Desks | New Republic.