There’s a guy with no legs who roams the subways with his torso balanced on a skateboard, pulling himself along with his hands. To hop over gaps, he grabs bars with one hand and holds onto the skateboard with the other. In our neighborhood is a cententarian lady with eleven remaining snow-white hairs gracing her head. She has tennis balls on the back feet of her walker for the right combination of friction and easy glide. She folds it up and uses it as a cane when she gets into the subway car, and she doesn’t like to sit down because it’s too hard to get back up. There’s a chubby guy with rust-colored hair in a wheelchair who goes down the stairs backwards holding onto the rail because there’s no elevator in our station. Do you know what they all have in common? They’re all moving faster than you are!
C’mon, nobody has to move this slow! Jesus Christ intubated with a suction hose in a nonaccredited hospital! I don’t care if you can’t go down stairs fast, but if you can’t, quit taking up the whole goddam stairwell. I really hate starting my day with a shove to the back of someone’s kneecaps, so move it or scoot over! Yo, oblivious person with the fucking cell phone, is there a reason you’re standing motionless 1 foot to the left of the end of the stairwell? I bet your reception improves if the antenna stick is surrounded by distal nasal membrane tissue, let’s try it in your left nostril.
Glaring at me will get you nowhere. Don’t ever stop moving when you step into a subway car like that. Yes, there are poles there. Those poles are for people who can’t make it to the middle of the subway car because the middle is full. Those poles are not for you to grab and plant your stupid selfish pig butt just inside the entrance. I didn’t set out to wham the corner of my big Targus computer bag deep into your ribs and abdomen as I ploughed past you on my way to the half-vacant standing room in the center of the car, but about 11 people were right behind me trying to get on, see?
This is New York City. If you want to move slow, go live in Iowa or Louisiana. If you wanna smell the roses in the damn subway, though, keep walking while you sniff or I’m gonna have to slap your face bloody with a stemful of rose thorns.
As a regular rider of public transport (in fact it’s the ONLY way I get around) I can say one thing… AMEN!
God damnit people how hard is it to move further onto the bus or train so other people can get on? I have a stroller here, I can’t squeeze past your fat ass and it’s not like I can just pack the stroller up and drag it along. In fact that takes up almost as much space as the stroller when it’s open. Just because I have a baby with me doesn’t mean I’m not allowed on the train! You pissed me off before I got pregnant, more when I did (It was a baby tummy! I couldn’t suck the damn thing in and shoving me against the pole to cram your friends in when it’s already packed wasn’t going to do a damn thing.), and even more so now. I have just as much a right as you to using the transit and maybe I need it to get to my baby’s doctor appointment? Or maybe hell I just wanted to get out of the house… it doesn’t matter which. You aren’t the center of the transit universe.
Also cramming up to the doors during rush hour. You see you aren’t the only people wanting to use this train. This train is already packed with a good portion of people, some of whom want to get off here. You aren’t making getting on any faster if you block the exit of people who are making more space for you on the train. You are the exact same assholes that the first time I rode public transit to my new high school and home, shoved me up against the side of the train and kept me there while everyone else got off and on. I quickly learned that being polite won’t get me on the train and where I’m going on time thanks to you.
Or the stairs! I know you are high school students and absolutely have to spend the time chatting with your friends… but why the hell do you have to do that in 5-10 people groups in the middle of the freaking stairs at the station!? This is a busy place! Go stand out of the way on the platform! Or I know go stand outside the station as you are obviously not going to use the transit soon. It’s not freezing out there that you need to be warm, so go chat elsewhere!!
AHunter3, let me take this opportunity to tell you that you rock ! You are wise on many subjects, and you have once again chosen one close to my heart.
Although I note you have left one species out of your rant: those assholes who haven’t figured out the subtleties of “WALK LEFT, STAND RIGHT.” How fucking difficult is that? Geez.
And the people who clump together at the front of the streetcar, and then glare at you when you have shove past them to get to the empty space at the back of the streetcar because they ignore your repeated “Excuse me, please!” pleas and seem reluctant to acknowledge that anyone else may ever want to get on or off of the streetcar.
All the other jackasses who take public transit with me have been addressed.
I saw the most obnoxious gaggle of girls on the train last week. They packed onto the train at a pretty major change stop, and had the nerve to shout at everyone else to squeeze in when there was really no more room to do so. Then, when a bunch of people (including me) had to get off at the next stop, the ringleader screeches, “Well, why didn’t you get off before?!” I had no energy to properly take her to task, but really, what the fuck is up with that comment? Had you not been so set on cramming your loud asses into the train and jamming the door for everyone else, you’d have nothing to bitch about. Yes, to save you discomfort I’ll get off a full, oh, I don’t know, ten or twelve blocks or whatever in the freezing cold so that you can linger in the doorway.
Judith I think it’s a problem with the teenagers, though not exclusive to them (I have adults cramming up to the bus as I try to get off with the stroller). The main problem occurs at the station near my old high school… the students get out at once and cram on to the train as quickly as they can.
You forgot a couple of groups of subway riders in the OP.
Guys who think they have huge testicles.
There are men who when they sit down they must spread their knees to be at least 3 feet apart. They act like they are in pain if they are forced to move thier knees any closer because of thier huge testicles being crushed by their own inner thighs.
Well buddy, do you really want know what crushed testicles feel like?
Do you?
Also somepeople need to measure how wide their ass is, because they don’t seem to know. If you look down and there are about 20 inches between me and the next person and your ass is 50 inches wide, well guess what? You can’t sit down. Or at least go sit on the guy with the huge testicles. They probably make nice seat cushions.
This phenomenon is not particular to subways. About half of the freshman class at my school think that, in order to talk properly, they have to be in a circle in the middle of the hallway, with a minimum of a foot between each person. If you want to get through for some reason, they’ll glare at you, but eventually move. It’s especially annoying when they’re wearing backpacks and have forgotten it, so when they ‘get out of the way’, you have to struggle past about a dozen backpacks filled with crap.
And, when getting onto the train, your task will be considerably easier if you allow those getting off to alight first. Making a Three Stooges burst for the doors as soon as they open just screws things up, because until those people get off the train, there probably isn’t going to be enough room for you in there.
Ooh, I forgot about the unrepentant backpack wearers ! Another group of people I shove around mercilessly. If your backpack is in my personal space, and you make no effort to remove it, I will make no effort to avoid knocking you off-balance as I attempt to get past your backpack.
I’ve taken public transit to school in this city for … fifteen years? … and I always take off the backpack. You idiot. Soon I will start rifling through the pockets in your backpack. Maybe then you will learn.
And the people who think they are the only ones who are impatient to get home, and the forty other people with whom they have been stuck on the streetcar in the snowstorm with for the past hour and a half are there only to piss them off further and get in their way when they try to get to the doors.
I sat next to one of these guys on the train last night. I was even thinking about doing a Pit thread about him. It didn’t occur to me that he might be protecting his enormous testicles though. I just though he was an egotistical jerk.
Great OP AHunter3. You and everybody else have adressed my peeves about pedestrians and transit users, except maybe three, the fucking teens who think it is fun to open the train doors between stations, thus bringing it to a halt. I guess they must not be in a hurry to get where they’re going, or they enjoy annoying everybody else, also those who think that the whole metro car must and should listen to their conversation, so they talk at a level slightly lower than a jet engine on afterburners. And let’s not forget the pedestrians who like to stop at the most inconvenient places, like between a light pole, a snow bank and a mail box while being themselves the size of a small Mack truck, take five minutes to discipline their child who has been misbehaving for the last ten minutes or so and that they didn’t bother to act on it because they were having a mundane conversation with another person, but now decided that, the conversation being over, it is time to act on the child. Lady, I don’t feel sorry at all to have barged between your child and you without a “Sorry”. You don’t own the sidewalk and another thirty second to move out of the way wouldn’t have hurt you nor your child. If you had at least the same amount of brains that God gave to a truckload of manure, you would have seen that.
