Friday, October 10, 2008

Metro Riders--please be advised, there is a train directly behind this one...

There is almost nothing that has the power to fuck up the rest of your day quite so quickly as having to de-board the Metro on your way to work (discovering that your friendly neighborhood Starbucks is out of coffee/closed ranks a microscopically close second...and has yet to happen to me in the Nation's Capital. Thank Jesus.)

Having said that, I can deal relatively well with even these delays. I have about a half an hour window in terms of arriving "on time" at work and there are three reliable Starbuckses within in an eight block radius. When the doors closed and repeatedly reopened at the Court House stop this morning, everyone kind of knew it was time to gather belongings and make towards the platform. When the lights flashed to alert us, there was an audible grown among the throng of be-suited government employees and bleary-eyed interns but we got politely, regardless. The P.A. suggested it was train malfunction, which is usually code for "assholes who would not stand clear of the doors" as we waited for the next train. I waited for two more trains before getting into one. Mostly because my fellow Metro riders failed to notice the large gaps at the center of the train and instead corralled around the doors, perhaps blocked by some impenetrable force-field of self-importance and "personal space", unable to move to the center of the fucking train.

It's common Metro courtesy kids, we've all read the PSA posters about collecting our bags, not leaving errant copies of the Express lying around, and avoiding the label "escalump". Can't we also scooch down the lane?


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