Metro de Madrid is once again using social media to highlight proper behavior on trains, and this time it does so with a message that is as graphic as it is direct: “Not like this.” The company has posted an image showing a seat occupied—not by a person, but by a backpack—with a foot resting on the upholstery and headphones left on another seat, a perfect illustration of the kinds of behaviors that take away space and comfort from other passengers.
The message accompanying the photo is brief but unmistakable: “You don’t like it either, do you? Not like this. #Civility.” With this approach, the company appeals to the user’s empathy, inviting them to put themselves in the shoes of someone who is left without a seat or has to ask another passenger to move their backpack so they can sit down.
Beyond serving as a gentle reminder, the tweet is part of the civic campaign Metro has been rolling out in recent months, in which it has already warned against other common behaviors: leaning your whole body against the handrails, blocking doors, shouting on the phone, or keeping backpacks on your back instead of on the floor. The strategy combines a friendly, almost conversational tone with highly recognizable images, aiming to ensure that the rebuke doesn’t sound like an institutional scolding, but rather a shared reminder of basic rules of coexistence.
Backpacks, feet, and seats: why it matters
One of the campaign’s main focuses is backpacks and carry-on bags, which Metro asks passengers to always keep on the floor, between their legs, or directly in front of them—never slung over their shoulders or occupying a seat. There are several reasons behind this insistence: on the one hand, to avoid accidental bumps in crowded cars; on the other, to avoid giving the false impression that the train is more crowded than it actually is, which discourages others from sitting down or moving around comfortably.
In the case of feet on seats, the problem isn’t just about space, but also hygiene and maintenance, because this inconsiderate behavior causes them to deteriorate sooner and get dirty faster. Putting your shoes on the seat may seem like a harmless gesture on a short trip or in a half-empty car, but its impact multiplies when we’re talking about a network that transports millions of passengers a day and needs every seat to be available and in good condition. This is a problem shared with buses, where this behavior is even more common.
The “Not like this” tweet joins other recent messages in which the public transit company has been compiling, almost through a series of small reminders, an unwritten guide to good practices for riding the Metro.
Alongside these messages, the network has been implementing physical changes such as marking priority seats in green and placing stickers with behavior guidelines inside the train cars themselves.