Are you a window-opener or window-closer?

[Backdrifter]

It's that time of year when people get irritated with each for either opening or closing windows on buses & trains. Which side are you on?

I'd always rather have the window open. I reckon people who think "oooh no it's too cold" are missing these points:

- If you sit on a crowded bus with all the windows closed, you're in a sealed box full of everyone else's breaths, coughs and sneezes. It quickly becomes a steamy fog of all their germs, droplets and viruses that you are constantly breathing in. It's a surefire way to get ill. But with a window open, you have air movement to prevent this.

- As it's already cold, you should be suitably dressed against that anyway. If you're one of those morons who wears thin cotton clothes in this weather, you deserve to feel uncomfortable just for being so stupid.

- It's unhealthy to keep going from heated places to cold air. In the steamy bus, you get to inhale everyone else's germs. Then when you go into the cold, you're at just the right temperature for them to start breeding in your respiratory passages.

I have a feeling I'm in the minority though...

[eash]

Window open, trains are so hot and stuffy.
There was something about this in this morning's metro newspaper not an article as such but someone's views were texted in.

[mccfluff]

opener, i hate hot stuffy environments, but i work with a bunch of closers!

[ummmm]

Opener. I was cringing on the bus this morning watching kids writing their names in the condensation.

[funnygirl]

On the tube, you tend to get covered in soot, so I always shut them!!!!

Not healthy I know.

[Backdrifter]

Yes, when I see people wiping the window - WITH THEIR BARE HANDS! - I shudder. Don' t they realise that's everyone's condensed breaths they're smearing over their hands?! Yecchhh.

The problem is, the window-closers and window-wipers are probably a lot to do with how colds get circulated each winter.

[Lakitu]

window wipers? LOL

I'm an opener. Actually, I can't remember the last time I used public transport, but my bedroom window is still open all night.

[Backdrifter]

I didn't expect openers to be winning 5-1. Surely there are some determined, committed closers out there who want their voices heard.

mccfluff I sympathise - too many times I've been in situations where the closers win, often in workplaces as you say. I got on bad terms with someone I previously liked due to her insistence on closing a window the moment it was opened ("I will become ill", she whined).

[funnygirl]

It amazes me that in this weather people still wanna keep their home windows open!!!!

All that heat escaping and aren't they cold????

[jen78]

definitely an opener :)

[1984doherty]

On a train - Windows open.

On a bus - Windows closed - it's way too cold on a bus no matter how many layers!

Your point about going from heated places to cold then to heated etc being unhealthy is wrong though as it actually improves circulation.

[Backdrifter]

Blood circulation, you mean?

[1984doherty]

Yeah, blood ciculation.

[netibiza]

I'm an awkward b*gger, if someone's got the window open, I'll want it closed and if they have it closed, I'll want it open!!

[Backdrifter]

doherty maybe that does help blood circulation but there are other ways of achieving that, and 'temperature cycling' doesn't strike me as a particularly healthy way in other respects, e.g. respiration and viruses.

[1984doherty]

Well. It's good for me as i have a fantastic immune system :-D ...can't remember the last time i had a cold!

Apologies to others whose immune system aint great.

[Barmaid]

I tend to like fresh air. However, on the train back from London last week a couple of chaps got on and sat near me and opened every damn window. I was frozen because I had taken my outer clothes off to sit and work. The carriage was empty, so why couldn't they have gone up the other end and opened all the damn windows?!!!!

Instead I had to pack up and shft my belongings up the other end of the carriage so I could actually hold a pen to write.

[sara3]

I'm in an office where we argue over the windows! the heating system is rubbish and I don't want to sit at my desk wearing outdoor clothes to keep warm.

so.. in early March I had a "discussion" with a colleague regarding this matter (it was cold!), he flew into a rage and hasn't spoken to me since. yes, since March.. and he's right there ^ sitting opposite me!

I don't mind some fresh air, but I can't work when my little hands are frozen!

[Backdrifter]

Blimey Sara... even I got back on good terms with my window-closer. Hasn't spoken to you since March?! I suggest he has issues other than fresh air.

While I generally prefer there to be an open window, I accept it you have to be reasonable about it. Cranking open every single window in a train when it's empty is massively overdoing it.

[eash]

Oh yeah exactly, there's got to be some common sense about the situation!