Please Replace With a Robot at Earliest Possible Convenience

I have a major problem with the conductors on the Long Island Rail Road. Well, shit, I have a major problem with just about every aspect of the Long Island Rail Road. But I really don’t like these clowns.

They march down the aisle clicking their hole punchers rapidly to get your attention, as if they can’t waste their precious breath to ask you for your ticket. Sometimes they like to make announcements over the PA demanding that you have your tickets out, usually in a surprisingly forceful manner. Oh, I’m sorry sir, is your time so fucking precious that a few seconds of your shift can’t be spent waiting for me to fish my ticket out of my wallet while I’m crammed between a window and an underpaid/overcharged schlub like me? Well the LIRR seems to be in the business of wasting commuters’ time, so I take every opportunity I can to return the favor.

A wise fellow commuter once told me that he never takes his ticket out until the conductor is right there next to him, and he takes his time doing it. So you know what? That’s exactly what I do now, and I suggest that all of you do the same from this point forward. I wouldn’t look these assholes in the eyes to save my life, so I don’t know if it bothers them, but it gives me a small sense of satisfaction. Sometimes I like to hold up a finger as if to say, “Hold on a second,” while I finish reading a line in a magazine, or typing a line on my computer. The worse of a mood I’m in, the longer they wait. If the train is late pulling out of Penn Station and I’m stuck standing because the train is a few cars short, I’m going to “check” every compartment in my bag, every pocket in my pants and jacket, and every compartment in my wallet before I “find” my ticket.

These losers are also complete cowards. When there’s some kind of weather related fuck-up and it’s clear we’re all getting home past our bedtimes, you won’t see a conductor the whole ride home. Where are they then, all high and mighty demanding your ticket? Oh, don’t want to face an angry public because your incompetent organization is ruining thousands of riders’ nights? Scared that someone might take out their frustration on you? Get out here and do your goddamn job, numb nuts. I wonder how long I would keep my job if I hid at work to avoid clients who were unhappy.

If this were feudal Japan, every MTA worker would have committed hari-kari due to the shame they’d brought upon themselves.

But above all else, there’s a rather serious reason I can’t stand these slugs. A staggering percentage of them abuse disability. Read it and weep. Literally. Don’t act like being on your feet all day clicking a hole puncher is so physically taxing that you need monetary compensation for it. Do ticket takers at movie theaters file for disability because they stand all day tearing tickets? No. How about cashiers at grocery stores? Nope. The notion of them getting disability pay for what they do would be laughed at. Yet somehow the MTA has no problem doling out money to these lying slimeballs.

A conductor’s job requirements are pretty well spelled out, so you should know what you’ll be getting yourself into. Get some comfortable shoes and a wrist guard, and stop complaining. Now go conduct yourself to some broken glass and sit on it.

Bustin' Makes Me Feel Good

So not every day on the LIRR is all that bad. At its worst you will be left blood boiling, standing in a hailstorm, three hours after you should have been home, waiting for a train that’s not coming…and no one bothered to tell anyone that it wasn’t gonna show (actually happened). Other times your commute might be made less pleasant by a man approaching middle age who thinks Couples Retreat is the funniest movie of the past twenty years and insists on quoting it almost every day (also true). Since every day isn’t always a complete nightmare, I’ll recount some of the A+ days from years past when new happenings are slow.

Today’s story comes from the files of “My headache was caused by a fellow commuter, and not the LIRR. Holy shit, what a nice change of pace.”

Every once in a while I forget my iPod or headphones at home or at work. When this happens, a beacon is sent out to all the crazies alerting them to sit as close as possible to me on the train and talk at the loudest possible volume about inane shit.

In the mornings I try to catch the express train if I can, because I like my commute as short as humanly possible. On this particular morning I happened to be taking a later train. Double whammy: I left my iPod at work the night before and now I was going to have a longer ride in.

Somewhere around Brentwood, a grungy looking, middle-aged fella gets on, plops down in a seat across the aisle from me and promptly falls asleep. No problem. It’s about two stops later when he takes a phone call that the problem begins. This is one of those guys who has NO PROBLEM letting the world know his business. Because if it were an issue, he wouldn’t speak at a decibel level well above that of a Motörhead concert. As an added bonus, he had a thick Long Island accent and he was one of those guys that pronounces all his S’s as slight Sh’s (i.e. ‘Sho I shays to the guy…’)

I was doing my best to drown out what he was saying, until I heard the same phrase repeated a couple times: “Don’t be bustin’ down my door, bro.” It was then that he had my full attention, because clearly this was a story worth hearing. Luckily for me, he’s one of those guys who will tell his story over and over again from the beginning, as if his listener can’t quite grasp the gravity of the situation.

From what I could piece together, this guy lived in some kind of halfway house. That morning, some fellow creep he lived with came into his room while the guy was still in bed. The creep was just kind of hovering over him, when the guy snapped out of his sleep and unleashed on the creep. He recanted to his friend how he grabbed the creep and held him against the wall while continually reprimanding him with the words, “Don’t be bustin’ down my door, bro.”

This guy must have said, “Don’t be bustin’ down my door, bro” sixty times in the span of ten minutes. Often preceded by the phrase, “So I says to him.”

Do me a favor. Go say, “Don’t be bustin’ down my door, bro” ten times in a row and tell me you don’t want to punch yourself in the face. This guy’s phone call lasted almost half the ride and I have never been more sorry that I had no audible diversion.

I’ll be honest, I feel bad for the guy. No one wants to wake up to some weirdo staring at them in their sleep, but I have a problem with a flaw in the guy’s storytelling: He woke up after the creep had been staring at him in his room. If his door had been busted down, as he so undoubtedly believed it was, would he not have woken up at the sound of wood being torn from its hinges? I suppose, but then the story wouldn’t have packed the same punch if he had been saying, “Don’t be gingerly openin’ my door, bro.”

Signal Problems!

Sometimes I think the Long Island Rail Road lives in a fantasy world. No, not sometimes. All times. I’m roughly 40,000,000,000% sure they do. Not only do they think that over $300 a month is a bargain to ride on a shitty, century-old rail system desperately in need of updates, but they somehow think their service is exceptional. This is something that is constantly touted in the monthly Train Talk newsletter that is left on train seats in a “Here, you throw this away” fashion.

This also means they believe that March 1st is the first day of Spring and that it has never snowed in the month of March, ever. So when it DID snow on March 23rd, it’s as if the LIRR was collectively caught off guard in their Tommy Bahama shirts, feet up, sipping fruity drinks with paper umbrellas in them. I also envision everyone wearing straw hats. And someone has a ukulele.

If anyone had the pleasure in being on the 7:11pm Ronkonkoma train on the night in question, then you probably know what I’m talking about (assuming you get off at Central Islip or Ronkonkoma). On display this night was everyone’s favorite horseshit reason for delays: the signal problem.

BING BONG. “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the inconvenience but we’re currently being held at a stop signal. We’re experiencing some signal problems up ahead…” You know the drill.

The train sat for thirty minutes just west of the CI station, constantly being told over the PA by some overpaid, shaved ape that we were going to be moving in about five minutes. When we did moves six five-minutes later, we rolled into Central Islip, riders disembarked, and we headed out. As the train crawled out towards Ronkonkoma, the train came to a stop again, now east of the CI station. For another. Thirty. Goddamn. Minutes.

BING BONG. “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the inconvenience…blah blah blah…moving in about five minutes.”

I’m going to throw a few statistics your way and then I’m going to ask you to answer a question.

1.     The Long Island Rail Road is the largest commuter railroad in the country.

2.     Long Island has a temperate climate, where it gets cold in the winter. In fact, winter-like conditions can usually be experienced between the months of November and April.

3.     The LIRR is consistently plagued by signal and switch problems. Most of these problems are weather-related. Usually having to deal with snow and ice.

Based on what I have just told you, select the statement that makes the most sense:

A.   The LIRR should update the switches and signals, so that they are 100% functional year-round in the environment in which they dwell.

B.    The LIRR should leave switches and signals as they are, and cause constant delays and frustration any time it drizzles.

I’m going to guess that most of you picked A. If you chose B, then you are probably Jay Walder or someone else with a cushy position within the MTA. I will never not be amazed at how inefficiently this system is run. It should really no longer be a shock to me, but you can’t help but be amazed by the feckless nature with which problems are handled.

The Long Island Rail Road will no doubt applaud itself for the fast manner in which they acted, and continue to hype their laughable peak on time performance.

BING BONG. “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the inconvenience…”

Stop apologizing and get me home already, fuckface.

Fun fact: While “fuckface” is flagged by Word’s spell-check, “horseshit” is not.

Hofmann Lenses

I'm sure anyone out there who lives on Long Island has ridden the Long Island Rail Road at least once in his lifetime. Maybe it was to see a Rangers game or a concert or a Broadway show. And maybe the experience wasn't rife with delays, broke-down trains and asshole-y ticket-takers, and I'm sure you thought, "Hey, this is kinda fun." You. Are. Wrong.

Remember that John Carpenter movie They Live, starring 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper? The one where he and Keith David beat the everlasting shit out of each other for six goddamn minutes? There were these sunglasses in that movie, and when a character wore them, he could see things as they really were, which were normally hidden to the human eye. Money and billboards had hidden subliminal messages. Normal looking people turned out to be butt-ugly aliens.

Well this blog is going to be a pair of those "Hofmann lenses", showing the ins and outs of the daily LIRR commute. I'm not sure how regular updates will be, but if it takes me four hours to get home (which it has on several occasions), you can bet there will be a post.