Friday, February 4, 2011

...Commuters are silly...

I commute to work. It is not the nicest commute in the world, but I deal with it. Every day, I drive to the subway terminal and take the subway into the city, and every evening, I take the subway out of the city and drive back home. Every day, the subway is packed to the doors. Nobody is comfortable, everyone is irritated. (Personally though, I just try and steady myself while I play angry birds on my phone...I actually have quite a good time with it.)

By the time we all make it to the terminal stop, the population on the train has lessened quite a bit, but the congestion on the roads outside is still horrible. Sometimes it takes nearly 30 minutes just to leave the immediate area around the subway station parking lot. It is always like this, no matter what day of the week it is (excluding weekends OBVIOUSLY).

So what baffles me is the behavior of some of my fellow commuters. Let me describe to you the scene that typically unfolds before me as I am on my way out from work.

I walk to the subway station near my office and I descend onto the platform. Generally there are a good number of people occupying the narrow strip of cement, but not enough to make it dangerous. At this point, I remove my gloves and pull out my phone, intent on making those porcine egg thieves pay for their transgressions against the mighty bird kingdom. The PA system squawks a disjointed prerecorded message about the train arriving, so I cease my incessant avian assault for now.

Now I assume many, if not all of you, have seen the pictures of the train attendants in Japan forcibly shoving passengers onto the Tokyo Metro. Well the Boston subway system is something like that...only instead of kind, courteous, Asian station attendants, you have angry middle aged white men who think that loudly announcing that people "need to move in more" will MAGICALLY create more space for him to squeeze onto this train. Generally I watch this desperate struggle the same way one would watch scavengers fight one another off to ensure they all got fed (only without the dulcet British tones of David Attenborough to explain exactly what the fuck you're looking at), and then simply wait for the next train.

By the time I get on this next train (also typically quite full), I watch as about HALF the people get off at the next stop, some of whom GOT ON AT THE SAME STOP AT ME. This wellspring of anger I channel towards more productive things, like turning green limbless pigs into proverbial digital bacon to be consumed by my bird brethren. Typically after a couple more stops, enough people have left that I can sit down and better aim the slingshot that was shooting my birds to death and glory.

Finally I reach the terminal station. I stow my phone and get off the train car. Here's the part that really gets me. People, the same types of people who have been riding the train with me, the same types of people who will be stuck in traffic with me trying to leave the parking garage, these people, similar to myself in almost every way, make the CONSCIOUS decision to SPRINT OFF OF THE TRAIN presumably to get to their car faster to...what...sit in traffic faster? Seriously people, what does RUNNING TO YOUR CAR accomplish other than make you more tired for the BUMPER TO BUMPER TRAFFIC that you can CLEARLY see through the windows of the TRAIN STATION. Guess what? Just because you won an imaginary foot race to your car DOESN'T mean you've beaten ANY traffic. IT'S ALL RIGHT THERE! WHAT'S THE POINT?!

I think I have discovered the only time where my fatass laziness has actually paid off....

...And that's what I learned today.

4 comments:

  1. My sentiments exactly! Like when people pass you angrily on the highway only to find that you're right behind them at the next red light.

    I concur with the subway stuff too... yay two years of commuting to school in Boston... but at least I didn't have to drive into the city :)

    -MMMMMmmmmmMMMMmmmm!

    P.S. Sorry for not commenting on the last post... I don't has a dog :( But my cats are equally special, if not more so. My cat has fallen off of the shoe cabinet down to the bottom of the the staircase and only with hitting the walls to soften his fall. Twice.

    That didn't make sense. The shoe cabinet is on the opposite side of the top of the stairs. Fail again. You get it. He's stupid.

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  2. I once met a guy who ran everywhere because he said walking was too boring for him... maybe all of the subway people are just bored.

    SOLUTION: Share your mysterious bird game (which I assume is some sort of newfangled "app") with your fellow travelers and all will be well!

    ~Emily

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  3. We don't have a subway in Austin. We have a metrorail, though. But not many people use it, so there's not really a rush to get on or off and run for the car. When I lived on Campus I noticed that a lot of the students actually pushed and shoved each other trying to get on the shuttle that took them from Campus to off campus housing. I don't think that's the same thing, though.

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  4. @Chanel: I think shoving on mass transit is really pretty universally obnoxious...mode of transportation doesn't quite matter hahahahaha.

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