No Good Excuse for Long Island Rail Road

The customers are onto you, Long Island Rail Road (LIRR). Switching problems, lightning strikes, track fatalities, slippery track conditions, signal failures, police investigations — these are just some of excuses you pawn off on us as reasons for late or cancelled trains.

But as far as excuses go, they’ve become tired and lame.

If you’re going to keep us locked up in one of your frozen, stinky cars for four hours or more during a snowstorm, or turn us into crispy hot dogs on the Jamaica station platform as we wait for phantom trains, then we deserve better. We want to be entertained.

This is a more sophisticated, more jaded society Helena Williams, and we will not be treated like children. Don’t pander to us with these lame reasons for the failure of you or your equipment. Give us what we want!

I mean, I was once trapped inside a train sitting at the Penn Station platform, while we waited for a late conductor. No one ever said word, until we started moving, and they said there had been some “confusion.” Oh, truer words were never uttered from the LIRR.

But there is hope.

What the Long Island Rail Road needs is to establish a Department of Excuses. It could sort of be a covert arm of the current, useless marketing department.

Think of it. You could bring in some of the greatest minds we have from sales, advertising, marketing, politics, and the legal profession, and you’ll have yourself one heck of an excuse-creating machine.

You see, you guys have it all wrong. The trick is not less communication when something goes wrong. You have to give the public — many of whom happen to be your customers, not sure if you know that — what we want to hear, and in huge, heaping, triple-shot-sized doses.

We don’t want reality; just look at what’s on TV. No, we want to be entertained, even when our train is going to be two hours late, and we have to shell out $75 to ride in the back seat of a cab driven by a psycho muttering about terrorists.

So, for once give us what we expect. Give us the best damned excuses you can think of, and then beat us over the head with them.

Once this program becomes a success at the LIRR, and I know it will, you’ll have the perfect “excuse” to raise the fares again. The great part is, none of the commuters will complain, because we’ll be magically quelled by some grand excuse. It’s a win-win really. And then you can roll it out to the rest of the MTA, or even franchise it to other companies.

I mean, Verizon has been telling me for 4 years that my landline keeps going out because the copper cable is susceptible to the rain. How lame is that?! They can do better, and so can you.

Let’s start right here, and right now, LIRR.

The Pregnant Woman Refused My Seat, and Another Guy Took It

I remember reading a really great post from the Chocolate Belly recently about pregnant women not getting the seat privileges on mass transit -- being lumped under the moniker of disabled. The post also posed the question as to whether one would give up his, or her seat to a pregnant woman.

Not to pat myself on the back, but I am a big proponent of this. It makes me feel good, and is respectful to the woman and the precious cargo she carries. But I've been burned before, and last night I got burned again.

On an ultra-packed, standing-room-only 5:38 train out of Penn, I had a seat - a prime commodity, like beachfront property in the Hamptons. I saw a woman get on the train, who looked pregnant. She wasn't showing amazingly, but she was pregnant.

I deliberated for a few seconds, and got up. I tapped her on the shoulder, and offered her the seat.

She turned me down. It turned out she was getting out in a few stops and would probably be harder to get up after sitting down.

I didn't want to sit back down; that's kinda rude. In case she needed the seat, the offer would stand for as long as I was on the train. Turns out, so did I - stand, that is.

What's worse than that?

Some other bonehead who happens to call himself a man gets on the train, spies the seat, and claims it. Not once did he consider the fate of this woman with child.

What is wrong with people these days? There were many men sitting down, and none of them even flinched to give her the seat.

Men: Give up your seats, before you give up your souls
Pregnant Women: Take the seat.

Beware the MumbleHiss!

Commuting on the Long Island Rail Road is one, giant ball of annoying. Late trains, smelly trains, crowded trains, fares that pay no observance to the laws of gravity…but perhaps there is no single greater annoyance than the MumbleHiss.

Oh, you’ve never heard of this creature? Consider yourself lucky. It is surely like none I’ve ever heard before.

Don’t get me wrong; the MumbleHiss, like Frankenstein’s monster, is well intended. But it is grating to every sense and common sense, nonetheless. It typically sits next to, across from, or behind me with its best friend — which could be another person or a smartphone. It talks in tones loud enough to be heard, but low enough so that only “Mumble, mumble, mumble, hiss, hiss,” becomes discernible. The mantra is hypnotic, and I find myself transcendentally transported to some suburban soccer field as I desperately start to to care about  what is being discussed.

“Mumble, mumble, hiss, hiss.”

Unfortunately, this creature is protected by a bunch of crazy liberal laws devised hundreds of years by some socialists. Until we can get these laws changed, or eradicated completely, we must learn to coexist with the MumbleHiss.

So, when you prepare for your morning commute, make sure you pack a pair of earphones, lest you become the MumbleHiss’s next victim. Of course, don’t turn your MP3 player too high, or you may turn into a BoomBoomChit. You know what that is, don’t you?

Rock Out With Your Socks Out (or, Is This a Shoes-Optional Car?)

C’mon, dude! I didn’t need to see your tube-socked feet this morning propped up on the train seat, like you were waiting for a pedicure or foot massage.

I don’t know where you or those feet have been, and I’m not really interested in finding out. Where were you raised, at Thom McCann? Do you drop shoe and assume this position of comfort wherever you go?

Give us all a break; put those feet back inside your nasty New Balance sneakers, where they belong.

OK, I must admit, I’m a bit jealous. I’d love to have my size 12s unfettered from their leather prison. But something deep inside of me, not sure whether it’s a nature thing or a nurture thing, tells me I just shouldn’t do it. Cause, there are, like, other people around, dude!

Maybe you’re some out-of-touch, spoiled socialite on his way back from a party in the Hamptons. OK. I get it. If that’s the case, why not go the whole way? Take off the tubes, too, and let the all the salt, fat, and alcohol you ingested last night escape all over that seat.

Now, where’s the conductor? He makes 50 announcements a day urging us to kindly not put our feet on the seat, and then does nothing when he encounters the violator. Coward!

What’s the punishment for such a crime? A stern look, maybe? A little slap on this little piggy or that little piggy? What should be done is to dip your feet in honey, and then into a swarming horde of red ants. Beats scalding butter, though.

Well, thanks for grossing me out this morning, Mr. Tube Sock Guy.