Manners on the T, or How I Will Eventually Be Arrested for Assault

Ready for some full-contact commuting?

This morning I happened to see a coworker at the T station. She lives in my town, but tends to go into work earlier and stay later (drag), so I don't see her on the subway that often. She took off her headphones and we started talking.

When the train came, it was fairly full, but it looked like there would be enough room for both of us to board. We had just made it inside the doors when I was pushed deeper into the train from behind, causing me to bump into several people. I regained my balance and turned around to see a man and a woman who appeared to be a couple squeezing in behind me. There was quite a bit of twisting and shuffling as the other riders tried to accommodate me and the pushers.

I was directly in the middle of the train, equidistant from all the grab bars. I was able to shift a couple of inches and get close enough to a bar to get hold of it (If I had shorter arms, I would have been out of luck). The train doors were still open, and there was still a good bit of rearranging of bodies going on. Mrs. Fuckface said, "I don't think there's enough room." Mr. Fuckface said, "It's okay." I tilted my head toward him so he would hear me and said, "Not really."

He looked at me and made a face. I glared back. He was a little shrimp of a guy (aren't they always?), and it occurred to me that I could have shoved him back off the train pretty easily, but I've already been sued once in my life (for something I totally didn't do) and believe me, once is enough.

I turned to my coworker and said, "If you want to put your headphones back on, I don't mind." She said, "There's not enough room to move my arms." We switched to the Green Line at North Station, and as it happened, a nearly empty E line train was coming in just as we crossed the platform. We looked at each other. "This is more like it," she said. When we boarded, we were able to sit down, a rare thing indeed.

On the flip side, when I was waiting to pay for my lunch, the person in front of me got to the cashier and started fumbling in her wallet (a pet peeve, but a subject we'll save for another day). After we had passed the fifteen-second mark with no resolution, the cashier gestured for me to put my salad on the scale. She actually rang me up first because the person in front of me wasn't ready. How often does that happen? Ultimately the woman discovered that she had no money on her, and had to leave her food.