As a worker at a job and a user of public transit, you’re inherently tangled up with people and modes of transportation that are, inexplicably and inextricably, shitty. While working and commuting, you’re surrounded by such a dense fog of disrespect, incompetence, and hostility that you are losing track of who is triggering your anxiety and what is causing your existential dread to surface so forcibly.
You must determine the source of your stress so you can process it. You made a list of the behaviors that you find most troubling, and now you just need to answer one question:
Is it your shitty boss or that shitty subway line?
- Arrives late almost every day, keeping you waiting when you are on a tight timeline. Forces you to schedule your day around their ever-changing whims. Has a sixth sense of when you desperately need them to be on time and is even further delayed.
- Screams in a deafening manner when they arrive. Interrupts productive conversations and thinking processes; disturbs your sense of time, place, and self.
- Never holds doors open even when they see you running toward them, pleading for them to wait one more second. Berates you if you dare hold the door open for someone else.
- Posts rules about how you should behave around them, but does not seem to have any discernible standards for their own behavior.
- Moves at their own pace, oblivious to how this impacts you. Sometimes careens so fast that you’re knocked off balance; sometimes crawls so slowly that you lose faith in their ability to make meaningful progress.
- Doesn’t have a place for you to sit even when you’re spending 45-70 minutes together.
- Comes to a halt when they are in the middle of something. Turns off the lights and falls eerily silent. Provides no explanation as to why they’ve stopped working or when they’ll start again.
- Delivers important announcements in a cryptic, garbled way. Leaves you scrambling to interpret information that is obviously vital.
- Shames you for wearing a backpack in their presence.
- Prefers to work where natural light can’t reach them. Fails to understand the consequences of you spending inordinate amounts of time away from the sun. Seems to enjoy fluorescent lighting.
- Puts up signs when they don’t feel like working. Rarely provides advanced notice or considers that they’ve left during peak hours when you and tons of other people need them.
- Has a one-track mind. Does not veer from the predetermined path they insist on following.
- Is unavailable on nights and weekends. This is understandable, but it would be nice to know that you can rely on them should a time-sensitive emergency arise.
- Emits an unapologetic aura that you love to hate.
