Riding the subway is the absolute worst

If you live in New York, this is probably like the most cliché topic of conversation: the subway is very crowded. During certain points during the day, it’s totally inadequate at transporting the number of people trying to get from point A to point B. Everything about riding mass transit here is a challenge. From the moment you even decide to go somewhere, it’s nothing but obstacles every step of the way.

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Walking to the subway stop, you’ll be like a block, a block-and-a-half away, and you’ll hear the rumble of the train as it approaches the station. You think, shit, I can make this. As long as I run, as long as there’s an unobstructed path all the way to the platform, I’ll be OK, I’ve got this. But you’ve never got this, because there are always a million people in the way.

Because there are always like a million people taking the train, and all of them are thinking that same thing, I got this. But, you know, different people have different ideas of how long it’s going to take to get to the platform, different people have various opinions on what constitutes a brisk enough pace to make it there on time. That guy over there is walking really fast, but I’m walking even faster, and so is he going to make way for me to pass? Of course he’s not. Nobody’s making way for him to pass.

You make it to the turnstile right as the doors on the train open, there are like three people ahead of you trying to swipe, a bunch of people making their way out of the station via the same turnstiles. You have a few standoffs, the people exiting clearly have the advantage. All they have to do is push, whereas you have to swipe your card.

It says, “Please swipe again,” so you swipe, “Please swipe again at this turnstile.” It’s not hitting, even though you know it’s all about timing, you can’t go too fast, or too slow, you haven’t gotten stuck like this in a while. The guy behind you lets you know how frustrated he’s getting with an audible groan, a whispered, “Ugh … come on …” and you want to turn around and give that guy a look, a stink-eye, something, but you’re trying, one more swipe and, “Insufficient fare.”

The doors to the train close, not that you would have made it anyway, not with the insufficient fare. And there’s another line for the Metrocard machine. You’re waiting, you’re tapping your feet anxiously, checking behind you every ten seconds or so, making sure that you’re not going to miss another train. The lady in front, come on, the instructions are so clear, you want to just take her credit card out of her hand and do it for her, there you go lady, tap, tap, zip code, tap, thanks.

And then when you finally find a spot on the platform, you’re waiting, everyone’s waiting, “The next downtown N train will arrive in. Eight. Minutes.” People keep spilling into the station, crowding the platform. By the time the downtown N finally does pull up to the station, you’re already thinking, no way, no way is this overpacked train going to be able to hold everyone.

The people get off, everyone on the platform is jockeying for position, ready to grab one of the precious square feet or so of space. You make it inside, you slide to the middle of the car. It’s so tight that your body is pressed up against the bodies of three other people. Despite the lack of personal space whatsoever, the guy next to you is determined not to let the less than comfortable conditions deter him from reading his book. Even if it means him angling his elbow outward into your space, holding his paperback like an inch away from your face. Is he even comfortable craning his neck like that? What, does he have a book report due six stops from now? Doesn’t he notice that every time the train bumps or jostles that the spine of the book is tapping you on the side of the head? Tap, tap, tap.

And then when you’re half a stop away from your destination, this lady sitting in front of you, she abruptly stands up, or tries to stand up anyway, there’s no room for another standing body, so she starts yelling out, “Excuse me. Excuse me!” trying to get up, pushing to the crowd, pushing a little harder, “Excuse me! I need to get off! This is my stop!”

And you want to be like, you know what lady? This is my stop too. You just had a nice comfortable sitting down train ride, right? You got to catch up on some cell phone games, I saw you eating a sandwich, and don’t think every single person around you wasn’t grossed out when you started clipping your nails. And now you want us all to somehow contort our bodies so that you can be first one off the train?

“Excuse me!” she somehow made her way to the door, she always does, the train pulls up to the next station, even more crowded than the one before. The doors slide open and the people at this stop aren’t as patient, they start piling in, the sitting down lady is shoving back, “Ex! Cuse! Me!” some other guy behind starts yelling, “Let the people off! Come on! Let the people off!” It’s a shoving match, everybody pushing each way, the conductor gets on the loudspeaker trying to instill some order, “Let the passengers off the train first! I’m serious! Don’t make me come out there!”

There’s got to be a better way, man, they’ve got to figure something else out. Is this is a problem in other cities? I mean, I’ve seen horrifying videos of rush hour commuter traffic in China, and so yeah, it’s definitely worse over there. But what about Toronto? Or Boston? Is it that much of a nightmare getting anywhere in DC? Are people maybe a little better behaved? Can some of you come over here and help us out, maybe throw a few suggestions our way? Because this sucks over here, man, riding the subway here is the absolute worst.

New pens in the supply room

Someone told the office manager that we needed more pens. Three days later, there are all of these boxes in the supply room. I thought, great, finally, I only had like one pen left. At one point there were at least a half a dozen in this decorative mug I keep on my desk, but, and I don’t want to point any fingers here, because I know how crazy it sounds, for me to just go around giving this blanket accusation toward basically everybody in the office, but it’s the only reasonable explanation I’ve got, that someone’s taking my pens.

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Do I think it’s anything personal? No, I mean, I can understand it, sometimes. It’s not like I have my own office. And yes, I can think of maybe one or two fluke occasions where I was on the phone with a vendor or a client and I needed a pen – probably because someone had stolen all of mine. Was it Jones? – so I’d kind of just reach over the cubicle wall, not over, but around, I’d take it.

But, and I’m trying here, I’m going back in my head, trying to make a real thorough inventory of how many times this could have happened, and I’m really only picking out two or three distinct memories. Two, it was definitely two. And each time, I’ve put the pens back as soon as I was done with them.

I remember the second time vividly because as I was reaching back around the cubicle, Sally was like, “What are you doing?” and so I told her, “Sorry Sally, I just had to grab a pen real quick, and here it is, I’m giving it back.” She recoiled, it was a physical reaction, a pained look of disgust, “Ew, OK, not ew, but still, just … it’s yours. Just keep it.”

But I pushed it a little, because I knew where it was going to go if I did push it, just a little further, I told her, “OK well, I just thought you might want your pen back.” And it did, it went exactly where I thought it would, she said, “I’ll just take some more from the supply room. It’s a pen.”

It’s not just a pen. I said that to Sally, I said, “It’s not just a pen, Sally. I’m always losing pens. And then there are no pens in the supply room. And yeah, they get filled eventually, but it’s just unnerving, I just want my pens. If everybody just kept track of their pens, we wouldn’t have any of these problems.”

Whatever, she stopped paying attention, turned her back toward me to show how little she cared about how much I cared about the pens. But how could I not? I was sitting there, the day before the new pens came in, it was a crystal BIC, black, but, and this is a pretty bad habit, yes, but the cap was all chewed up. Nobody took that one.

If I had the same six pens that I had grabbed from the supply room weeks ago, I wouldn’t chew on all of them, just the one. But people steal the good ones, – it’s definitely Jones, he’s got like fifteen pens on his desk – and I’m left with this barely functional, old pen.

Fine, new pens, I’ll get over it. Only, these aren’t crystal BICs, they’re some knockoff pen, the ballpoint doesn’t really roll that smoothly, keeps leaving behind these globs of ink on the page, my sleeve is getting dirty. And there’s no structure to the pen itself, it’s like this thing, it’s made out of rubber, or plastic, like a really cheap plastic.

“Come on Margaret,” I went to the office manager’s office, “Why didn’t you get the good pens?” And she barely even registered my complaint, “It’s a pen, jeez, it’s just a pen.” But it’s not a pen. Or, OK, it’s a pen, yes, but what’s the thought process behind picking out the cheapest pen available? We had crystal BICs, and now we have this off-brank junk. How much could you be saving the company? And why? Just because it’s “just a pen” doesn’t mean you have to buy the absolutely lowest-priced model.

Don’t you think if maybe we bought moderately priced pens, nothing fancy, I don’t see what was wrong with the crystal BICs, don’t you think we’d be spending less money in the long term if you think about how many we’re all going to be just eventually throwing away? Because these things are terrible, honestly, what are you saving, like twenty bucks? Can I just donate twenty bucks to the office supply budget?

And I swear to God, as I was talking to Margaret, which was going nowhere by the way, I saw Jones, on the phone, he walked right past my desk. He went right for my last crystal BIC, he took one of my tissues and threw away the chewed up cap, and he putsthe pen behind his ear. I walked over to say something, like what the hell Jones? You’re going to take my last crystal BIC? But he was on a phone call, I went to say something, he just put his finger in the air, like, one second buddy, and then he turned it into a thumbs up and walked away. Come on man, this isn’t pen communism here, those are my pens, can we just establish a few rules? Just like three or four pen rules?

Just three pen rules. Rule one: Only buy good pens. Rule two: Get your own pens from the supply room. Rule three: Stop taking pens off of my desk, OK Jones? I’m going to lose it, I swear to God, just give me back my BIC, now.

Gas station co-op

“Fill me up with regular,” I told the guy working the pump. Normally I never get full-serve gas. I mean, I know how to work the pump. It’s ridiculous to make someone else get out there and do it for you. But there was a line behind pump three, and the positioning of my gas cap … yeah, I guess I could have made it work. It would have been an awkward three-point parallel park to get over to the opposite side. Or I could have just waited like five minutes.

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But it was freezing out, and it happened so fast, my brain’s way of justifying anything. There was a split decision, for a second I didn’t feel bad about paying those five extra cents a gallon, I pulled up at the full-serve pump and the attendant came around to take my credit card.

And again, it’s not really like full, full-serve. I’d imagine full service to be me not having to turn the car off during refueling. That’s got to be a bullshit rule, turn your ignition off while the pump’s running. What’s going to happen, an explosion? I doubt it. You’d hear about a gas station explosion, even if it only happened once in a while. You hear about every time a plane crashes, and that’s not a very common thing. So a gas station explosion, that would be big news.

Besides I’m pretty sure I’ve left the car running before. One time it was really cold out and I knew that if you used pump eight, the handle still had that little lock, like you could set it to pump and then go back inside the car and wait. It was great, almost like self-full-service. And yeah, I do remember it now, I left the car running, the heat on, I was listening to the radio. I must have lost track of time though, because all of the sudden the gas station guy was banging on my window, he was screaming, I couldn’t tell about what exactly, but I got out of the car and there was gas spilling everywhere, I guess the automatic shut-off wasn’t working for whatever reason, and there was this huge puddle underneath.

That was a pretty expensive mistake, something like a hundred dollars worth of gas, mostly spilled. But still, you fill up the tank and you don’t spill anything, it’s not cheap. “Sixty-seven twenty-three,” the guy handed me back my credit card and my receipt. Was it the full-service? It couldn’t have amounted to that much bigger an expense.

“There’s got to be a better way,” I looked up at the attendant. I don’t even know why I said it. I’m driving a car, I just had this guy pump my gas for me, what’s he interested in my complaints? Oh boo-hoo, you had to pay money for gas, you got sit there in your car and watch me pump it for you. And it’s freezing out here. And are you going to give me a tip? And I don’t even know, do you tip gas station guys? Sure, he’d definitely accept it, but is that a thing?

He was surprisingly sympathetic. He looked me in the eye and said, “There is a better way. You interested?”

“Of course I’m interested,” I said, and he told me to follow him inside the little gas station attendant’s booth.

“A gas station co-op?” I didn’t really understand it. I mean, I understand what a co-op is, you know, for food, for groceries. They have one a little further downtown, where people have to put in a little time at the grocery store, shelving boxes, running the register. I’ve never been, but I heard it’s something about organic produce, a lot of raw stuff … to be perfectly honest, I don’t get the appeal. But people love it.

“So you work the pump for like two hours a week, and then you get fifteen cents off of every gallon as long as you stay in good standing with the co-op.” He looked at me, he definitely had that look like, I got him, I’m totally getting this guy to sign up for the co-op. They must have had some referral program, because, even though this guy clearly wasn’t a natural salesman, I could still see that glint in his eye, the promise of welcoming someone else into the fold.

“I don’t know,” I was getting a little cold in the booth, “I’ll think about it.” Which definitely meant no, and he could see it too, because his face got visibly frustrated. I couldn’t tell if, you know, he might make one more play to get me to stay. He looked like he was about to say something else, but then his head turned abruptly and he ran out of the booth.

Apparently he must have forgotten to take the pump out of my car. And also apparently, I must have forgotten to shift the car into park. Because it started rolling, very, very slowly, backward. He fiddled with the driver’s side door, to get to the brakes, but it was locked, and that pump started stretching, a little bit more, I wasn’t reacting as fast as he was, and then it snapped, gas everywhere, they had to shut off the master pump to stop it from pouring out.

“What the hell man?” he said to me, and all I could see in my head was some owner coming over to the station, screaming at me, all of that lost gas, plus all of the lost sales from having to shut the place down for the rest of the day.

“What the hell to you?” I said in defense, “You were the one who left the pump in the car. You told me to follow you inside. That’s on you, man.”

And I could tell that he was angry, he was frustrated, but that same whatever it was that prevented him from really selling me on the co-op, it was also hindering him from really articulating any more of a fight. He just stood there, staring at me, he looked increasingly more pissed, I worried that he might do something desperate.

I said, “Hey man, you know what? I’m thinking about that co-op. Here’s my number. Once you get this whole pump business fixed, just give me a ring, I’m in.”

And yeah, that worked a little bit. His face didn’t get any more relaxed, but it stopped twisting into as big of a grimace. He didn’t offer any resistance as I took the pump handle out of my car, screwed on the cap and drove away. I could see him in my rearview mirror, holding that piece of paper on which I wrote my number.

But it wasn’t my number. I wrote down the number for the deli across town. Because fuck that, I’m not working for some gas co-op. That just sounds crazy. No thanks, I’ll pay the fifteen extra cents a gallon. Of course I can’t go back to that gas station for a while. And I’m never doing full-service again. I’m telling you, that’s bad news, all right? You just get out, or you wait for a pump, and you do it yourself. Unless you’re in New Jersey, where self-service is mandated by law. But fuck that too, get out of Jersey fast, you never know when Chris Christie is going to shut down another bridge and make it a real headache for you to get back to New York.

Workout pro

When I started working out last month, I expected to get some results, eventually. I mean, this is all so new to me. Just basic techniques like stretching, how to correctly handle a small dumbbell, these were all foreign concepts to me. Push-ups. I started doing push-ups and I could barely get to ten. And I’m sure my form was way off, my back arched, by the sixth or seventh, I couldn’t really tell if I was going all the way down and up.

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But that was just a month ago, and it’s like now I’m already a completely different person. I can’t even begin to think of to what I can attribute my rapid success. It’s like, week one, I was terrible, I was sore, I couldn’t do anything. And then immediately into week two, I somehow transformed into this workout pro. I don’t know how to explain it.

Like the push-ups. Remember how I said I could barely do ten? Now I have yet to find my upward limit. The other day at the gym, I was almost getting frustrated. What turned into a pre-workout warm-up wound up consuming the entirety my afternoon. I said to myself, you know what? I’m just going to do as many push-ups as I can.

I lost count. It was somewhere around four hundred when my mind couldn’t keep up with the monotony anymore. And by the time I looked up at the clock, not only had I gotten lost in my physical routine, but I’d completely lost track of time. I was only supposed to be there for an hour, but the gym guy had to tap me on my back, he was like, “Hey bro, we’re closing.”

“Closing?” I couldn’t believe it, “You mean I’ve been doing push-ups here for six hours straight?” Shit, I thought, that means I definitely must have missed work. What was I going to tell my boss, that after only six days of starting a New Years workout resolution, I’ve somehow made enough progress to where I’m able to continuously do push-ups, one after the other, with no sign of ever needing to stop, even for a small break?

“And the craziest thing is, I never even felt tired!” I tried telling my boss, who, it’s not just that he was skeptical, it’s that he wasn’t interested in even entertaining my story. “It’s true,” I tried to catch his attention again as he turned away, “I’m telling you, watch, look, I’ll get down right now. One. Two. Three. Four.”

But he was just like, “Get off the floor Rob, you look like an idiot. I have a restaurant to run, I’m not going to sit here and watch you do push-ups. Just … if you miss one more shift, that’s it, we’re going to have to let you go.”

And right as he was saying that, I got this idea, like fine, I don’t need this stupid job anymore. I could work for the gym. I could be like a personal trainer. So I said, “How about I let myself go,” and I threw down my apron and stormed out. And I went straight to the gym.

“Hire me,” I told the guy at the front desk, “I want to work here at the gym.” And the guy said, “Well, I guess we could use someone to make sure all the weights go back on the racks after people are done using them.”

I said, “No, I don’t think you get it. I want to be a trainer. I can do like an unlimited amount of push-ups.”

And he said, “Well, that’s great, but you know, you have to get certified to be a trainer, and even then, you’ve got to build up a clientele, so if you bring say, ten or eleven people here, get them a gym membership, I mean, we could give them a preferential rate, then maybe we could talk about giving you a cut.”

“Wait a second,” I told him, “Client base? Do you want to see me do push-ups? Seriously, ask the guy who closed the other night. He had to kick me out. I was doing push-ups for like six hours straight.”

“Look, that’s terrific, really, but this is a business, so unless you can somehow make a successful business model out of those push-ups … well, like I said, you’re more than welcome to start part-time racking weights.”

And that sucked, because it was only like seven an hour, and I had a lot of bills to pay. My old boss wasn’t that forgiving either, he let me back, but I had to start over as busboy, which meant a lot of hours for a lot less pay. In fact I was spending so much time at the restaurant that I didn’t have any time to work out, I barely had any money to pay for my gym membership.

By the time I found an hour to sneak away, it was like months later, all of that muscle I’d built up, well, if you don’t use it, you lose it, right? And so I was back to square one, I couldn’t even finish ten push-ups. And of course, guess who walked by right as I was struggling around number seven. It was the gym owner.

“Keep pushing there buddy, you’re doing great.” Why couldn’t he have walked by when I was at the top of my game, huh? Because I don’t think he believed me, if only he could have seen, I was just cranking out push-ups, I could have powered a small city just on upper body strength.

“Keep pushing!” he wasn’t even talking to me anymore, he was just walking around the gym, doling out generic motivation to everyone in the room, “You’re doing a great job!”