Working from home for three years did not prepare me for a lot of things. How long does it take to get ready every day? Do I really have to put on makeup for work? Tights are the devil. It took me five weeks but I now know that if I don’t have a full hour…exactly one hour…to shower, get coffee, check email, etc. before leaving the house, I will be late. This is a very important thing to know because I am now a slave to public transportation and my “on time” status is every day in the hands of buses and trains.
I have to be out of the house by 8:10 to make it to work by 9. The bus comes right outside my stoop at 8:12 and 8:21 and if I’m one minute late for the bus, I’ll be 12 minutes late for work. I’ve gained more insight than just bus times these past few weeks. My road rage has been replaced with general transit rage.
Things I strongly dislike that I can’t avoid:
- super, super crowded trains where I’m forced to stand in heels and try to not fall at every stop/knock over fellow passengers
- weird guy next to me that sniffled every 5 seconds. Yes, he sniffled in rhythm. I found myself counting “1-and-2-and-3” etc in between each sniff.
-people who smell…especially those that smell like a 1,000 cigarettes died in their jacket
-extremely loud train announcers. Hearing “DIVERSY IS NEXT!!!!! PLEASE EXIT THE TRAIN – DOORS ARE CLOSING!!!!!!” 10 stops in a row at a thousand decibels really gets my goat.
Now I’m just bitching.
- super, super crowded trains where I’m forced to stand in heels and try to not fall at every stop/knock over fellow passengers
- weird guy next to me that sniffled every 5 seconds. Yes, he sniffled in rhythm. I found myself counting “1-and-2-and-3” etc in between each sniff.
-people who smell…especially those that smell like a 1,000 cigarettes died in their jacket
-extremely loud train announcers. Hearing “DIVERSY IS NEXT!!!!! PLEASE EXIT THE TRAIN – DOORS ARE CLOSING!!!!!!” 10 stops in a row at a thousand decibels really gets my goat.
Now I’m just bitching.
It’s not all bad, though. I like not having to worry about parking. It’s way cheaper than gas and my pass gets deducted from my paycheck. Today when I got on the train in heels a sweet man tapped my shoulder and offered me his seat. When I went to sit down, another guy tried to sneak in and nab the seat and my gentleman blocked him and said, “I’m giving my seat to her.” That made my entire day (and the fact that I just ran up two flights of stairs and was sweating profusely) enjoyable.
I took a bus last week to head to Nashville, even though I usually take the train to work. I thought a suitcase would be less annoying on a bus. Nope. A suitcase is annoying everywhere to everyone. Since I had never taken the bus before I wasn’t exactly sure which stop was the right one. The bus driver told everyone, at every stop: “Please use care when exiting the bus. Don’t forget your packages and purses and always remember to have a great day” with extreme enthusiasm. Everyone on the bus started laughing. When I asked the driver which stop would be best, he dropped me off right in the front of my building. I later checked and there is no stop there – he was just being nice.
Plus, as my always positive dad would say, “it beats walking.”
I took a bus last week to head to Nashville, even though I usually take the train to work. I thought a suitcase would be less annoying on a bus. Nope. A suitcase is annoying everywhere to everyone. Since I had never taken the bus before I wasn’t exactly sure which stop was the right one. The bus driver told everyone, at every stop: “Please use care when exiting the bus. Don’t forget your packages and purses and always remember to have a great day” with extreme enthusiasm. Everyone on the bus started laughing. When I asked the driver which stop would be best, he dropped me off right in the front of my building. I later checked and there is no stop there – he was just being nice.
Plus, as my always positive dad would say, “it beats walking.”
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