Hah! Fuck YOU, Line-Jumping Guy!

The BBQ Pit
1

OK, here’s the deal.

The bus stop at which I wait in order to get to work is directly in front of a garden apartment complex. One four-apartment unit has a path that leads directly from it to the bus stop. In one of these units lives Line-Jumping Guy.

Line-Jumping Guy cannot STAND to wait in line. Line-Jumping Guy MUST be at the head of the line. Line-Jumping Guy was obviously traumatized, way back in kindergarten, by the harshness of being “that kid” who was forced to watch in abject misery and impotent rage as the kid in front of him got the last chocolate milk. Line Jumping Guy has apparently taken a vow before God and man never to let this happen again, and here is how I know this to be true:

Line-Jumping Guy’s path leads directly to the bus stop (kiosk and all, built by NJ Transit and maintained by my town- it says so right there on the kiosk). RIGHT TO IT. However, should there be more than three people ahead of** L-JG,** he will- and this is no fabrication- he will walk one block to the corner ahead of the bus stop on the route and he will wait there for the bus, waving it down when it gets close.

In the immortal words of King Juan Carlos of Spain: “Que?”

I look at this guy like one would look at a grown man who runs to beat another grown man to the escalator. I look at this guy like I look at a grown man speedwalking (you know, running, but keeping your arms straight at your sides, maybe moving them a bit, but always with elbows locked, because, you know, you’re walking) to the newsstand when he sees that there’s one copy of the Times left. I mean, even in kindergarten, we knew that this was, although legal, pretty damn petty. Nobody liked that kid then, and I sure don’t like L-JG now.

I like him even less because- and here is the kicker- this is so early in the morning that there are ten people, tops, on a 50-passenger bus before it gets to our stop.

Dude! Line-Jumping Guy! Homey! Chill! You’re goddamn annoying, and your “I got there before you did (heaven help me, I’m chanting that in my head a la kids on a playground)” schtick earns you NO benefit, and the silent derision of your fellow riders. I can see the looks on their faces. They, like me, would be disgusted if they could get over the confusion as to why the fuck you do it.
So, having set the scene, let’s examine this morning. I get to the bus stop. Wait. Wait. Wait some more. No bus. This is unusual. One must be late. A line begins to form behind me, about 5 people long. I’m eating my granola bar, enjoying the melodic strains of RUN-DMC, when my man Line-Jumping Guy emerges from the Line-JumpingCave and surveys the scene five paces in front of him (I cannot stress enough that Mike Powell could jump from** L-JG’s ** porch to the bus stop without thinking twice about it).
Line-Jumping Guy walks to the back of the line. I can feel the conflict within him. Not even until the end of “Kings of Rock” does he stand for being in the back of the line. Off treks our intrepid Line-Jumping Guy for the greener pastures of the Bizarro Bus Stop, where he stands resolutely, awaiting his bus and the promise of a seat on what is sure to be a crowded bus.

Now, today, I’m a little more pissed than confused with regard to the line-jumping subject of my little rant. Because, with the buses late, or bunched together, or running less frequently, Line-Jumping Guy’s jackassery might just accomplish something. Every kid in high school has a friend “who steals,” and you don’t want to be a bad kid (because it’s just dick), but you still feel a little funny because he has all these new baseball cards and you don’t. So I’ve got a bit of animus in my heart for Line-Jumping Guy, because his assholishness is going to score him big today.
It is about at the point when I’m wondering if I can get all my fellow riders to swear in court that they saw nothing like the horrendous beathing the DA alleges occurred when I see two buses coming toward us. L-JG is in his glory. He’s gonna be fir-irst… he’s gonna be fir-irst (God, there’s the chanting again), and, in accordance with L-JG SOP, the lead bus stops for him, and the second bus passes and comes to the real bus stop. It is as I am getting on my bus (looking throught he windows at the six total people on my empty bus), that I notice the lead bus passing us by.
In bright yellow letters on the front of the bus are the sweetest words a man can see this sunny morning:

“STANDING ROOM ONLY.”
And there is our man Line-Jumping Guy, mashed in with the other standees, watching as a tumbleweed blows down the deserted aisle of the bus he cheater-cheater-booger-eatered to avoid waiting in line to board.
And we, the waiters, the patient, the godly and law abiding, each get our own seat thanks to the unwitting largesse of Line-Jumping Guy, whose nincompoopery became like unto a metaphorical Secret Service, eating the bullet of standing-room-only in service of the President of our comfort.
Fuck you sideways through the urethra with one of those sizzling-hot skillets from Chili’s, Line-Jumping Guy.
Karma’s a motherfucker, ain’t it?

2

I love this story…I think it was the “cheater cheater booger-eater” that really sold it for me. :smiley:

3

Guy helps you out and gets pitted for it? Can’t win for losing. Be a champ, and go out of your way to thank him tomorrow for what he did for you today!

Daniel

4

Abso-fuckin-lutely brilliant! Thanks for the laugh!

:: runs off chanting “cheater-cheater-booger-eater” ::

5

Damn. That hurts me just thinking about it.

6

In situations like this, why doesn’t the bus with standing room only, but with a nearly empty bus coming just behind it, start skipping bus stops? (Stopping, of course, when someone wants to get off the bus). The passengers on the first bus would get vto their destination faster, and without more crowding, and the new passengers would get there just as fast, but sitting instead of standing.

7

Personally, I can’t wait til I get a chance to yell “cheater, cheater, booger eater” at somebody.

8

I take it you’ve never stood at a bus stop and watched a bus pass you by? Even if the driver knows there is another coming up right behind that doesn’t mean the people at the bus stop will. A bus that skips stops, even if it is standing room only and another is close behind, is going to piss off a lot of people waiting for a bus who get to watch one just drive by and ignore them.

Enjoy,
Steven

9

Wow. I can’t believe the bus regularly stops on the corner for him, which from your tale doesn’t seem to be a designated bus stop. And presumably, multiple different drivers are doing it, no less.

Holy crap! You CANNOT get a busdriver in my area to stop (or open the doors to let you out) anywhere but in front of the marked curb where the sign is posted! Even if you’re sitting at a stoplight around the corner, a mere 30 feet from the next stop, where your transfer bus is slowly pulling away! Even if there’s someone 20 yards in front of/behind the stop, frantically waving his/her arms to flag the bus down because the next one doesn’t come for an hour!

I don’t know what your city’s bus company policy is, but IMHO, they’re merely enabling L-J Guy’s asshattery behavior.

And great fucking rant. I had a vivid image in my head of L-J Guy’s face when, as a child, the last chocolate milk was taken before him.
[Nelson Muntz] HA, ha! [/Nelson Muntz]

10

Y’all should have waved. Or at least pointed your fingers and laughed.

11

Three reasons:

  1. Because, toward the end of the line (before the bus gets on the highway and heads for the city), two lines converge and go through the center of my town, and it can get pretty crowded, so every bus has to pick up as many people as it can.

  2. I don’t think that the buses can talk to each other. There’s a central dispatch which talks to all the buses, but in fifteen years of riding NJ Transit buses, I’ve never heard two individual bus drivers talking to each other. I have time to look in the buses as I’m boarding, but I’d prefer my bus drivers to concentrate on taking tickets and not hitting things, so they might not be able to assess the fullness of the other buses.

  3. Who gives a shit why? Today that bus, standard operating procedure be damned, was an instrument of fucking karma. Today, that bus and its sardinelike occupants were the sword of heaven, punishing Line-Jumping Guy for his crimes as only sweet, sweet Providence can. You know how a kid shoves other kids out of the way to get to the ice cream truck, and then, mid-dash, slips and falls, and has to watch through the sting of a bloody nose as his change rolls into the gutter? You know the feeling you get watching that, as if balance had been restored? This morning, Line-Jumping Guy was the Asshole God’s avatar, and he took a fucking smiting. That is all you need to know.
    Jeez, Giles. Too many technical questions and not enough hate for Line-Jumping Guy.

Get witht eh program, man.

12

Yes, it’s happened to me. If the bus is full, I understand why. If there’s another bus straight behind, I don’t mind.

Really, you should be grateful that Line-Jumping Guy got to shoot himself in the foot this time. Yes, his kind is annoying, but life is full of bigger annoyances.

13

Well, I am glad. hence the joyous nature of my Pitting.

And sure, life is full of bigger annoyances. But nobody reads my “I Hate My Ex” threads, and besides, those aren’t as funny.

14

Yeah, this was my first thought.

Someone should speak to the drivers, and to the idiot line-jumper, because in every city i’ve ever lived buses are not allowed to make unsscheduled stops, both for reasons of safety, and because it might put the bus behind schedule.

15

Pottery, man. Sheer pottery.

But I’m a little surprised that people actually form a line. Around here, people just form a blob.

16

Great rant! I have an unhealthy hatred of line jumpers. (I almost said “as well,” but I don’t wish to categorize your feelings as unhealthy, or hatred. They appear perfectly legitimate to me.) This manifests itself mostly while driving. I control it enough to not do anything stupid, just some yelling sometimes.

The worst behavior can occur while waiting to get onto the highway. Our area has traffic-light controlled entry ramps to space out the pace of cars getting on highways during rush hours. Lots of places also have a bypass lane that can be used if you have one or more passengers, to encourage car pooling. Way too often I see people who are alone in their car use the bypass lane and zip past all the cars patiently waiting in line. Cheating bastard line jumpers! I hates them. But, a couple of times, I’ve seen the cops at the end of the ramp stopping the cheaters. Now seeing that gets my day off to a good start.

[total hijack] Happy, the other day my wife picked up the movie Clerks which she’s seen before and likes. As we were watching it, and the video store scene came on, my jaw dropped when the woman mentioned wanting the video Happy Scrappy Hero Pup. I almost shouted “That’s where he got the name!” (I’m just glad you didn’t pick any of the other movie titles.)

In case this isn’t where you got your Dopername, please let me know so I can feel really stupid. [/total hijack]
And tdn, “pottery”? If it’s a typo, that’s cool - I understand. If intentional, I think I like it even better. (How surreal.) And I agree.

17

Pottery? Pretty cool!

And you’re right, it’s just a blob here too.

How’re you doing anyway, tdn? (oh yeah this is the Pit) You goat-felching…um…I can’t be mean to tdn.

18

There’s a fanbase out there for those too, HSHP. They may not be as funny, but they’re more jaw-dropping-amazing.

19

Happy Scrappy Hero Pup is my new favorite poster. Dude!

:smiley:

20

You might want to avoid The Philadelphia Story in that case.

:smiley: