​ R-E-S-P-E-C-T

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Every morning, I sit in the quiet car. For those not in the know, the quiet car is the westernmost car on any peak train. The idea is that you keep your voice down, you don't talk on your phone, you don't blast your music and you generally don't be a loud piece of shit. But when have pesky LIRR rules ever stopped anyone before? Name one time you've seen a conductor enforce a rule other than booting someone from a train for not paying. Yeah, me neither.

There are a group of regulars that sit near me, and generally they keep it quiet, but every so often when a lot of them are together, it gets rowdy. There's one guy in particular who is the alpha asshole. While I know most of their real names (because regulars love talking about their personal lives in great detail as loud as humanly possible), I've never caught his. Let's just call him Asshole. Not creative, but fitting.

Asshole is your typical Long Island redneck. Loud, not very bright, drives a pickup (and never shuts the fuck up about it), loves guns, bashes Democrats any chance he gets, cranes his neck to look at any woman who walks by. This is a guy who talked about his marriage falling apart as if it were a wet newspaper. 'Oh well, guess I have to get rid of this now.' Classy dude, you can tell. As I type this, he and another guy are talking about ways to circumvent gun laws to get firearms with higher ammo capacity. Real comforting a week after two mass shootings.

One morning, the regulars are being loud (Asshole in particular) when a voice shouts from across the car, "Will you shut the fuck up already? This is the quiet car!"

Asshole is perplexed. How DARE anyone speak to him like that! The regulars start murmuring. "Woah, woah!"

"Fuuuuuck yoooou!" Asshole bellows. "How 'bout you mind your fuckin' business?"

"If you don't shut up I will gladly get the conductor and he'll get you to shut up," the man replies.

Asshole continues, "How 'bout you shut your fuckin' mouth before I come over there and shut it for you."

"You want to escalate this pal? No problem," the man says. "I will gladly come over there. Let's escalate this."

One of the regulars, a squirrelly little fella no taller than 5' 4", sees this as an opportunity to jump in, which he never would have done had Asshole not done so first. "Hey! Watch your tone!" Good job lil' guy!

Asshole, being the coward he is deep down inside does not invite the man over to fight, but instead mocks him with a lisp (the man had no lisp), most likely to imply that the man was gay. "Oh no! Heavens, not that! Goodness me! Anything but that! Oh my goodness, no!"

The lil' guy continues his "me too" approach, "If you care so much about the quiet car, then why are you shouting? You need to watch your tone." Yup, he said it twice.

The whole while, Asshole is continuing his trite "gay" voice. After a good bit of it, the man replies from the other side of the car, "Nothing? That's what I thought you fucking pussy."

"Fuck you," Asshole replies, trying not to sound too emasculated.

There is a moment when everyone goes silent before the squirrelly guy shouts back in the most authoritative, lame dad voice he can muster, "Respect the quiet car!"

That was a phrase that was actually said. Out loud. After this whole situation.

The rest of the ride continued silently and without incident, with great respect for the quiet car.

Broken Rails/Broken Spirits

If you ask any person what railroad tracks are made of, I'm sure that over 95% of the responses would be for some kind of metal, most likely steel. But ask any daily commuter what they're made from and you'll probably get answers like, peanut brittle, glass, thin twigs, frozen tears of commuters, cancelled meetings or shattered dreams.

The reason why is because these things break allllll the fucking time. Broken rails are the new switch and signal problems.

I'm not even shitting you, this is what my inbox looks like at least 3 days a week

Today is the third day in the past month that the trains have been completely fucked up due to a broken rail. The first time it happened, I avoided Ronkonkoma like the plague and headed to Sayville. When I get on the Sayville train, somewhere around Bay Shore, they tell us due to a broken rail (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA) that the train is cancelled. They tell us we can wait onboard until the next westbound train comes which won't be for at least a half hour (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA).

This isn't funny, it's purely the laughter of sheer madness

About 40 minutes later, our train is magically uncanceled. We are going to proceed ahead slowly, because of the broken rail by Babylon. Oh, and one by Bay Shore which they're not telling us about until now.

Want to take a guess what happens next? If you guess that there is yet another broken rail then you are either a daily commuter or you understand the comedy rules of threes.

HehehehehehahahahahohohohohahhaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Also, I appreciate heat being that it's winter and all, but sweet zombie Jesus, does it really need to be 90 degrees on this train? It's not like people are boarding in Bermuda shorts and tank tops. They're already dressed for the elements — I think we can turn it down a few degrees, Mephistopheles.

So all in, door to door, it took me over four hours to get to work that day — a new record for a non-blizzard commute.

Now, I'm no scientician, but if I were operating a railroad in a region that saw extremes in both summer and winter climates, wouldn't I want to make sure that all my equipment could operate in all types of weather? Wouldn't I fix the signals that fail whenever it rains or the switches that fail whenever it hits anything below 40 degrees? Sure, if I were a business that had any competition. But the fail road is a monopoly. And they know they have us by the short & curlys. We're going to take it because we have no other options. They won't update their equipment because then how will their crews get overtime every time they patch it back together with chewed up gum? I'm calling on someone like Elon Musk to come in and build a better railroad. One that runs smoothly and has robot ticket takers and automated messages and is, therefore, asshole-free.