Cube Logic

I've found myself frequently thinking about posting, but obviously I don't do much here these days. My workload is lighter than it was last year, though I am wasting spending too much a significant amount of time commuting again.

So what's different? Since I am back at the same employer as before I was laid off (and back then I was posting something almost every weekday), I've been considering what's different this time. I would say the way this job is structured, I'm doing a little more than when I worked there before, but not a great deal more.

I think I know what it is: I was more physically isolated from my coworkers. For a good part of the time I worked there I was in an area where almost on one came into my cube, or if they did I would have heard them approaching. Even after I moved to another part of the office, there wasn't much foot traffic in my area, and even if someone did pass by, our cubicles had higher walls.

Now I work in an open area in a cube that's completely open on one side and has lower walls on the other three. Someone sits directly ahead of me and someone else sits directly behind me. Until yesterday someone sat directly across the aisle from me, and the person who sits in front of her and the person who sits in front of me both pass my desk numerous times a day. I have a larger monitor, and it's much more exposed to others.

How much a person can see of my screen depends on what angle they are looking from, but I still feel a lot more self-conscious about what I'm doing at any time during the day. People probably look at my screen less frequently than I might think they are; I don't pay much attention to what's on my coworkers' screens when I'm moving around the office. But still, it does feel like we're under greater scrutiny, or at least that it's possible to be, and this affects my online activity.

I could take advantage of my lunch hour to work on posts, and I'm going to see if I can do more of this. But now that summer is fading, I feel more inclined to go outside during lunch, to get some air and move around. I'm more aware of my health than I used to be, and I know that getting in some activity, even just walking, is beneficial, and it's also nice just to get away from the desk for a while.

But that still leaves the dilemma of when to post. I also go to bed earlier these days, and I spend time before bed getting my clothes ready for the next day. This is mainly so I don't have to get up quite as early. I used to prefer ironing my clothes in the morning, because it allows for last-minute changes of mind about outfit choices, but I've found that being able to get dressed quickly is also an advantage. With the unpredictability of the T, almost anything can ruin a commute, and it's better to leave earlier, both for a margin of error and because traffic and crowding aren't quite as bad.

So I get up a little later and I leave the house a little earlier, but it turns out that having a more compressed morning routine helps keep me focused, making it more likely that I'll hit my target time for being ready to leave. My weekdays are more structured in general, but I still don't have as much free time as I used to. I can probably still find time to write, but it means I'll have to exercise greater discipline.

A Rush Hour Vignette

Normally I read the paper during my commute. I somewhat stubbornly cling to my old-media habit for several reasons: more than ever, it's important to be informed; I want to support a legitimate news organization; and it helps pass the time.

But lately my paper hasn't been making it onto my porch; I find it at the bottom of the steps, and this morning it was completely soaked from the overnight rain, in spite of being delivered in a plastic bag. So I didn't have anything to read. I had a section from yesterday's paper, and started working on the crossword, but after a few minutes my pen started running out of ink. (It's refillable, but I didn't know it was so close to running out.) I had no choice but to observe my fellow passengers, but today I was glad I did.

I was able to sit after a couple of stops, which is pretty unusual. There was a couple standing in front of where I was sitting, and a woman standing adjacent to the man. Like many other commuters, she had earbuds in. When we reached one of the stations downtown where a lot of people get out, the woman in the couple said goodbye to her partner, who bent down to kiss her goodbye. As he did so, the button on the back pocket of his pants hooked onto the other woman's earbud cord. When he stood upright again the cord stayed around the button, but he had no idea.

As I watched all of this, I looked at the woman wearing the earbuds. It seemed that I was the only person who had witnessed the whole scene; I caught her eye, and both of us started laughing at how silly it was. Clearly she didn't want to touch the back of the guy's pants, so she reached out and made a motion that moved the cord away from her body, and that was able to release it from the button. I looked at her again and said "Well played" in a quiet voice. She smiled and returned her attention to her phone.

Overheard: And You May Ask Yourself... Edition

(This isn't exactly "overheard," since the speaker was directly addressing a bus full of commuters, but it's close enough.)

On my way home on a recent workday, as the bus pulled into Ruggles station, the driver said to all of us preparing to exit and transfer to the Orange Line, "I don't know how you people do this every day. At least I'm getting paid to be here..."

Groovin' on the Bus

The things you miss when you are not commuting via public transit: this morning I got to hear someone else's music being played out of either (a) the tiny, tinny speaker of their phone, or (b) an actual radio with equally poor sound quality. The culprit was too far away for me to see the device, but I am confident that it wasn't an old-school boombox. I heard what I thought was a station ID, so it could have been a streaming radio station.

However, it must be said that the listener did have good taste: during my short shared ride on that particular bus, I got to hear "Evil Ways" by Santana and "Got To Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye.

Overheard: Unreliable Brain Edition

On the platform at the Mass. Ave. T station, I unavoidably overheard one side of a phone conversation. The caller asked the other person, "Did I leave my scarf in the car?" And then, after some explanation as to why she did not want to have to retrace her steps looking for it, she added, "Do you remember if I was wearing it?"

Back to the Office

I've been in my new/old job for a couple of weeks now, and getting used to again having a morning routine that includes getting out of the house in time to catch a bus. I've needed to make a few adjustments, and I admit that I'm trying to keep the routine a little tighter so I don't have to get up quite as early as I used to when I did this before.

Commuting via public transit is still a mixed bag. Some mornings everything goes smoothly; I get a seat, I read the paper, stations whisk by until I look up and realize it's time for me to get off the train. Other days the train is packed way beyond what is comfortable or safe, and doesn't thin out until Back Bay. I sympathize with my fellow commuters, because we're all in it together. We're all on that train because we have to get somewhere and don't have any better option for how to accomplish that.

At the moment, though, I'm only going to the office three days a week. There are space issues, which is part of the reason the department is moving to newly renovated office space some time in April. After my coworkers and I were laid off five years ago the department no longer needed all that space, so it was divided and another organization took over the other part. But as time went by the headcount started to increase again, and eventually they had to start doubling up in offices.

I am currently sharing an office, meaning my desk is a rectangular folding table wedged into a corner. It's not terrible, but I feel to some extent like I'm intruding on the original occupant's space, so I work from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This also helps create a transition period for the dog, who was used to me being here every day for the previous eight months. We were concerned about how she would react to this change; we have a dog walker coming on the other days, and Charlie seems to be okay with things. It certainly helps that she's getting treats stuffed into a Kong toy when we leave, and another one when the dog walker leaves.

One disappointment: when we move to the new office, we're going to be in cubicles. They are inescapable, I guess. Given what the renovations must be costing, the institution needs to maximize the number of people who can use the space, so we will be sharing the floor with two or three other departments and the floor will be filled with cubes. We have been told that they will be equipped with adjustable-height desk surfaces to accommodate those who choose to work while standing. I'm interested in trying this, even if only for part of the workday.

But cubicles are still better than the completely open office layout that many companies have adopted (allegedly because it "fosters collaboration"). I shudder a little every time I see one of these photos, and I'm thankful I don't have to work in an environment like that. I don't know how anyone could get anything done with so much going on around them; work requires focus.

Temporarily Un-Temped

I wrapped up my temporary work assignment today. I was there for four months, which was about a month longer than I originally expected. I'll be on a temporary break while I work on lining up another assignment. I have a few random thoughts on the non-work aspects of my experience...

—The office had a business-casual dress code. This wasn't a big deal, I just was not used to it, having spent more than a decade in jobs where I could wear whatever I felt like. I quickly figured out that a very large percentage of my nicer, office-appropriate clothing was for the cooler months, and I had to scramble to ensure I had enough warm-weather stuff. Also, lighter-weight pants tend to stretch out in the waist after I've had them on for a couple of hours, making adjustments necessary, so I had to wear my belts cinched tighter than usual.

—Conversely, I had plenty of shoes that I was able to rotate through during the summer, but I'm lacking in dress-casual shoes for fall. I have boots, and I did wear those some when it got cool enough, like today. But I'm going to have to add a pair or two of shoes.

—The commuting was far more burdensome than having to wear pants and long-sleeve shirts in summer. Working at home is starting to look more appealing...

—But if I work at home, I won't get to go out and get a tasty lunch every day; I'd end up eating peanut butter and Fluff all the time.

—I used to eat salad for lunch almost every day at my previous job, but I had access to a salad bar with excellent variety. There's only one in Harvard Square that I'm aware of, in the market on the corner of Brattle and Church, and it's kind of overpriced. So I fell back into my sandwich-eating ways (Pronto in the Charles Hotel courtyard, or Al's Cafe in Holyoke Smith Center), punctuated with falafel from Sabra Grill or the tortilla salad from Felipe's. I also went to Chipotle because it was easy and fast, but not more than once every other week.

—I never made it to the food trucks over by the Science Center, because it was kind of too far: by the time I walked over there and waited for my food, I'd barely have enough time to get back to my office, never mind eat. And I didn't want to be out walking that much during the height of summer anyway.

One Way or Another

Now that the weather has changed, I've been taking a different route to work in the mornings. Instead of going to the bus stop right on the corner, it involves walking for several minutes through the neighborhood to get to a different bus route, then connecting in Medford Square to another bus that brings me to Davis Square, where I hop onto the Red Line for two stops.

It might not seem like a better option, but in daily practice it is much calmer and more civilized. I enjoy the walk in the morning air (the walking is the reason I didn't do this in the summer), and I don't have to fight my way onto an already-packed Orange Line train only to have to fight my way off again after only two stops. And while the first bus tends to get caught in some traffic, it's not nearly as bad as what I encountered almost every day taking the 86. Some mornings I ride to Medford Square with the Mrs., who stops there for coffee on days when she's going to one of her two office locations.

The second bus runs through Davis and on to Harvard, but it tends to get bogged down on the stretch of Mass. Ave. between Porter and Harvard. The T has acknowledged this by having buses on this route alternate during the morning rush between running all the way to Harvard and going only as far as Davis. The buses are clearly marked; they say "DAVIS SQ" instead of "HARVARD VIA DAVIS" and they are indicated on the route's schedule.

But of course, people don't pay attention. This morning I boarded the bus and sat down. A couple of people got on behind me, then a woman got on and asked the driver a question about getting to a specific destination. He told her the bus was going only as far as Davis. Another woman sitting near the front jumped up and said, in a minor panic, "Wait, what?" He explained again that the bus did not go to Harvard Square, but connected with the Red Line at Davis. Her face cycled through a couple of expressions before she decided this was acceptable, said "Okay, whatever," to no one in particular, and sat down again.

Getting There is More Than Half the Drag

September has brought longer morning commutes, which I expected to some degree. But my earlier approach of taking an earlier bus is no longer effective, mainly because the buses are being delayed by heavier traffic.

It doesn't matter if I'm ready to leave the house at 7:45, because the bus isn't showing up for another 20 minutes. The gains I was experiencing by leaving earlier are gone, negated by sitting through multiple traffic light cycles at Wellington Circle. The culprit seems to be route 93, because 28 south is backing up all the way to the circle.

Sure, I read on the bus, or do crossword puzzles; if the mind isn't occupied, the ride seems twice as long. But it's all such a huge waste of time. And then I still have to get on the Orange Line, go two stops to Sullivan, and get the 86 bus to Harvard Square. It's still taking an hour, or longer, to go three and a half miles.

This morning I happened to be ready a little earlier than I expected, so I looked at the bus countdown page and saw that the even-earlier bus, the one that in normal traffic conditions comes by my corner around 7:30, was only a minute or two away, so I grabbed my things and hurried out to the corner. I made the bus, but it still took an hour to get to work.

But getting there earlier does mean I can leave earlier, and interestingly, the trip home doesn't seem to be fraught with the same sort of stress. I still have to be concerned about making connections, but generally it goes much more smoothly in the afternoons.

The Lull

I know it's been quiet around here this week. I'm always hopeful that commuting will provide me with observations I can share, but the couple of weeks leading into the Labor Day weekend tend to have lighter ridership on buses and subways because many people take vacation time. Fewer people means less chance of me seeing something interesting.

So the lack of material becomes the material itself, so to speak. It's easier to get a seat on a train or bus. Lines are shorter at lunchtime. Both of my coworkers have been on vacation these past two weeks, leaving me to handle incoming phone calls as best I can. The office is very quiet, and I love that.

But it won't last. After the weekend, life goes back to normal. The commute will get hectic again, and I'll arrive at work already mentally exhausted from jostling to get on and off buses and trains, and trying to make timely connections while dodging slower commuters with their heads bent, staring at their phones. I'll start to think about the merits of working from home.

And this is probably a good place for a mini-rant about commuting etiquette: seriously, what is it with you people? You cannot all board the bus at the exact same time, yet you still keep trying, and I stand there watching all of you in a combination of amusement and disgust. And then I try to move into place and wait my turn, and one of you always seems to find it necessary to force yourself between me and the bus so you can get on first. And just this morning I watched a woman try to exit a train at Wellington while another woman stood just outside the door and refused to move two inches to her left to make it easier for the first woman to get out, as though somehow relinquishing those inches would allow someone else to board the train before her—and if that did happen, so what? I've never even seen such behavior in New York, and I've concluded it's simply beyond my understanding.

Getting Home

Last Friday afternoon I was on my way home. I took the bus from Harvard Square to Sullivan, and when I came down the stairs to the platform, the clock said 5:37 pm. It also said that a train would not be coming for nine minutes. That's an unusually long interval between trains during rush hour when no delays or problems have been announced, but I was not worried because I only needed to get two stops to Wellington in time to catch the 6:00 bus, and most afternoons it takes about five minutes to get from Sullivan to Wellington, with a stop in between at Assembly.

I didn't make the bus. I don't know why, other than that the train did not arrive until 5:54. As I watched the sign, the interval went form nine to 10 minutes and stayed there for four or five minutes. No announcement was made about a delay. Then the clock started to count down. When it got to one minute, the PA did the "the next Orange Line train is now approaching" thing, followed by "the next Orange Line train is now arriving." It did that three more times, but no train appeared.

Eventually a train did arrive, but by the time I got to Wellington, I had of course missed the bus. In fact, I was close enough to see it pulling away when I got outside. I didn't feel like waiting around in the heat for 20 minutes, so I decided maybe I'd see if an Uber driver was nearby. One happened to be over at Station Landing, only a couple of minutes away by car. Then I noticed a cab at the curb. I've been kind of down on cabs since alternatives like Uber and Lyft (which I have not used) arrived in the area. I thought I'd give a cab driver a break, and save myself the two minutes that I'd have to wait for the Uber ride.

I walked closer to the cab and saw that the driver was not inside, but he saw me and came running over. I told him my destination and he replied that I would have to tell him how to get there because he was new to the area. Of course, all the windows had been left open and he did not give me any indication that he was going to put on the air conditioning. I let it go, knowing I'd be in the car only a few minutes.

I have not taken a cab ride for a while, and I'd never taken one from Wellington to my house (it's only the past year or so that I've noticed cabs even waiting at Wellington, now that they have more competition). I figured it couldn't be more than about eight dollars, and I knew I had a five and five ones in my pocket. But the total for the ride turned out to be $10.10. I also had twenties, having been to the ATM that day, so I gave one to the driver. He told me he had only fives for change. I didn't know if this was some sort of a scam or just a newbie driver not having his shit together, so I took a five from him.

But me being me, I couldn't quite leave it alone, so as I was getting out of the cab I said, "You know, this is exactly why people use Uber." That hit a nerve. He started waving another five at me, saying, "Take it, ten dollars is enough." I turned back and replied, "No, you deserve a tip, but I should be able to decide how much of a tip I want to give you. I'm going inside now."

Out of curiosity I went to Uber's site and looked up the fare for the route I'd traveled. The estimate is six to eight dollars (it's not a long ride). And had I taken Uber, I would not have had to worry about whether or not I even had any cash on me.

Tuning the Routine

I wasn't too happy about last week's steamy bus incident. And the next morning when I was again waiting at Sullivan, I saw the same bus rolling up, again with all its windows open. I stepped aside and again waited for a different bus; that one went to Central, so I had to jump on the Red Line to get the rest of the way to work.

The margin of error in my commute is already precarious, and I hate the idea of being late due to not wanting to ride on a bus without air conditioning. Over the past couple of weeks I'd been assessing my morning routine, trying to see if I could tighten it up enough to leave the house earlier. When I started this assignment, leaving later was working better for me, but that has ceased to be true. And I was finding that I would almost be ready to leave when the earlier bus came—I was off by maybe three minutes. (The buses run every 20 minutes in the mornings, so I have to aim for a specific time to be ready to leave.)

I came to the conclusion that I needed to start getting up earlier. Not by much, but if I wanted my mornings to go more smoothly, I needed a bit more time. Last Friday I happened to be ready early enough to catch that earlier bus, and I arrived at work 15 minutes earlier than I'd been getting there. That also meant I could leave earlier, which is just a bonus. So Sunday night I backed up my alarm by 10 minutes, and that seems to be the difference I needed. Yesterday and today my routine has worked better and I've been able to leave the house in time to catch that earlier bus. And I'm avoiding the no-AC bus as well.

(No hitting the snooze bar either; when the music comes on, I get up. It's disorienting for the first few minutes, but it gets easier. Now I have to work on getting to sleep earlier...)

Feeling the Heat

Is it 2015 or 1995? My iPhone suggests the former, but my 86 bus this morning did not have working air conditioning, which is what made me think I may have time-warped. It was one of the older GMC buses still in service, but my experience has been that most of those still have functioning AC. Lucky me, I caught one that didn't.

It turned out to be an unlucky commute in general: not only did I swelter, but I got to do it at low speed because of some traffic mess or other, all the way from Sullivan to McGrath. At that point I decided to get off the bus and wait for the next one, which took about 20 minutes to arrive.

I don't know how we used to do it. I know our bodies are more resilient when we're younger, and I know I lived and commuted without the benefit of air conditioning for quite a long time, but looking back it seems unbearable.

Well-Intentioned

This morning I got on the T and stood in front of a young woman, roughly college age, who asked me if I wanted to sit down. I didn't think I was looking particularly old today, but I didn't want to shoot down her intended good deed, so I thanked her, said it wasn't necessary, and that I was only going two stops to Sullivan. But it didn't exactly make me feel young...

Retro Tech

I have car things to share, but I haven't had the time to prep them. Meanwhile, I saw this person on a bus last week, sporting a vintage Walkman radio headset:

That thing has to be at least 20 years old, right? My recollection is that the yellow-and-gray "sports" style Walkman stuff was popular in the mid-'90s. It's kind of impressive that it still works. And props to her for keeping it solidly retro.

(Note: I didn't obscure her face because she was already turned away from me and is not, in my opinion, readily identifiable.)

Angles

Now that I've ridden on the T's newest buses for a while, I have one small complaint: the seats are not as comfortable as the ones on the older buses. It might seem a bit silly so declare a slab of hard plastic less comfortable than a different slab of hard plastic, but there is a bit more nuance to my argument. They've messed with the geometry.

The angle of the seatback is tilted slightly further back. I didn't check them with a protractor, but I can feel the difference. But worse, the seat bottom is angled slightly downward from back to front, which was not how the older bus seats were shaped. Combined with the back angle, this causes a feeling that you are going to slide down and off the seat altogether.

I don't need the bus seat to encourage my body to slouch; I can handle that by myself if I feel like it.

Going Underground

Every day when I leave work, I walk past the entrance to the tunnel in Harvard Square that the MBTA buses use, and every day I have to resist the urge to walk down it instead of going around the corner and walking one more short block to the proper entrance that pedestrians use.

I did walk in the tunnel once, a long time ago, but I walked out of it after getting off a bus, when I knew there were no other buses coming up behind me. Obviously pedestrians are not supposed to do this; there are signs posted saying not to. What can I say, I have moments where I get bored easily and think of doing something spontaneously. I didn't do it to defy the sign, I did it just because I was curious. It doesn't happen as much as it used to, which is probably better for my longevity.

When I get to the bus boarding area in the tunnel, I watch the buses come through and stack up, waiting for the first bus to finish boarding, and I wonder how the tunnel never got widened enough so that buses might be able to get around each other. Am I the only one who thinks about such things?

Adventures in Mass Transit: Detours and Poor Decisions

This week I've had some rough commutes to work. Things haven't been too bad since I started commuting again, but at the beginning of this week Webster Avenue, the primary route between Union Square and Central Square, was closed for repair work, and traffic was being detoured along Washington Street in Somerville to Beacon Street near the Cambridge line (and then through Inman Square). The 86 bus run is already pretty slow in the morning, and all the additional traffic made it much worse.

I had no idea how long the detour was going to be in place, so on Tuesday I went the same way and had another abysmal ride. On Wednesday morning I checked Google Maps for traffic conditions before leaving the house and ended up taking a different route, catching a bus to Medford Square where I switched to the 96, which runs through Davis and Porter and all the way into Harvard Square. But I had to wait at least 15 minutes for that bus, so my overall time didn't improve.

Yesterday I went back to the 86. The driver warned us before leaving Sullivan that the traffic was terrible, and gave people the chance to get off and go catch an Orange Line train; I opted to stay where I was, in a seat on an air-conditioned vehicle (a more pleasant prospect than a jammed train). About halfway between Sullivan and Union Square, a group of about two dozen children boarded the bus (with adult supervision). I'd estimate they were around eight years old, going on some sort of outing. They were reasonably well behaved, but the bus was still pretty noisy; I had to put away my book because I couldn't concentrate.

Also, a man behind me was on his phone, describing loudly to someone in great, specific detail how to get from somewhere in the middle of Somerville to Summit Avenue, which is near the top of Prospect Hill. He went through the directions three times and then asked, "Are you sure you want Summit Avenue and not Summit Street? Because that's at the other end of town, near Davis." He then went on to describe loudly and in great, specific detail how to get to Summit Street, also three times.

By that point I found myself feeling somewhat disappointed that I wouldn't get to find out how the Summit situation would be resolved, but a couple of minutes later he took another call and proceeded to reiterate the directions to Summit Avenue one more time, loudly and in great, specific detail. (Trivia/conicidence: a long, long time ago I lived on Summit Avenue.) Then he got off the bus.

I did eventually arrive at work, but late enough that I could take only a 15-minute "lunch" break. Today I thought I would make a smarter choice. I considered the option of taking the subway into downtown and switching to the Red Line, but it just seems silly to me to cover so much extra distance, and I'm always a bit wary of a breakdown underground, and taking this route would double the chance of something happening.

As it happened, I ended up making a different but equally unfavorable choice. I went to Sullivan and caught a CT2, which makes limited stops but stops at Kendall (where I could connect to the Red Line) on its way across the river. Unfortunately I didn't think too carefully about it, and after we were underway I remembered that the CT2 normally takes Webster Avenue. I tried to figure out what sort of detour the driver would take, thinking perhaps we might run down Medford Street behind Twin City Plaza and connect with Cardinal Medeiros Avenue to get into Kendall Square.

Nope, it went straight up Washington Street. There wasn't as much traffic today, but we still slowed to a crawl before reaching Beacon Street. I thought I could hop out at Beacon and either catch an 86 or just walk the rest of the way, but the driver would not make any stops or let anyone off the bus, since (presumably) it was not running on its usual route and there are almost certainly rules about these things. So I sat there while the bus crawled its way through Inman and continued along Cambridge Street, to the point where it was able to rejoin the bus's regular route into Kendall. All that took an extra 30 minutes.

Allegedly the road closure is supposed to last only through next week, but that means I still need to find a better, faster route to work for another five weekdays.

A Generous Fellow Passenger

This week I had what I consider a very unusual T experience. I was on my way home, making my connection to the Orange Line at Sullivan for the short ride to Wellington. There was a train coming into the station that would get me there in plenty of time to catch my final bus leg, which runs only every 20 minutes. There was another train seven minutes behind, which would get me to Wellington too late.

There were a few other people waiting near the front, and I suspected the train would be full, as it often is. I wondered if I'd be able to squeeze on. I try to board at the front of the train, because at Wellington there is only one exit and it's at the front. Sometimes, the seconds saved not having to walk half the length of the platform from a few cars back can make the difference between making the bus and missing the bus.

The train rolled in and a couple of people onboard moved out so a couple of people further inside could make their way out. As I waited, one of the other people waiting moved up next to me and closer to the doors. When the riders rearranged themselves, there was only enough room for one more person, and the person waiting moved into that space. I looked down the side of the train to see if maybe there was still a space at one of the other doors in the first car, resigned to missing my bus.

Then the person who had gotten on stepped back out and looked at me, gesturing to take his space. I was genuinely surprised; in more than 30 years of living here and riding the T, I honestly can't recall that ever happening before. I thanked him and got on the train. And I made my bus home. So thank you, sir, for your gesture of unselfishness.

Overheard: Verbal Schooling

One day last week I was on my way home on the Orange Line. I had gotten a seat a few spots away from the doors, so I was reading a book and not paying attention to the goings-on in the train car. At some point I noticed a verbal skirmish going on nearby, as the voices of the two people involved had gotten louder. I wish I had heard more of it, because the brief snippet I caught was pretty entertaining.

I was able to discern that a middle-aged woman standing by the door was trying to lean against the bulkhead at the end of the row of seats, and the metal bar that's positioned a couple of inches above it. Another woman, quite a bit older, was sitting in the end seat, resting her left arm on the edge of the bulkhead,  and holding a travel mug. The standing woman wanted the seated woman to move her arm off the edge, and the seated woman would not yield because she wanted both to rest her arm and hold her beverage at a convenient position for sipping. (This is a lot of setup, I know, but trust me it's worth it.)

They traded some snappish remarks with each other, the standing woman eventually resorting to the tried-and-true Bostonian solution of flinging assorted curses at the seated woman. The older woman then proceeded to mock the younger woman because she wasn't clever enough to come up with anything more clever than calling her a selfish bitch, or along those lines. At this point I was smiling to myself, impressed by the older woman's resolve and wit.

I missed a couple of lines, but eventually the standing woman, knowing she was losing, already embarrassed by the seated woman's cutting remarks, and getting a bit desperate, said something along like, "why can't you just let me lean here?" The response was, "I don't want your butt on my arm. I don't know where that behind has been."

I started to laugh out loud at that one, then quickly clapped my hand over my mouth and turned my  noise into a fake throat-clearing, because I did not want to betray evidence that I had been listening. But that was the final blow; the standing woman gave up with a sigh. Had this been happening on a TV show, the older woman would have done an imaginary mic drop, and for once that overused gesture would have been entirely earned and appropriate.