My Commute

I was late for work this morning and it was honestly not my fault. Public transportation is not fun on the best of days and it can make you down right homicidal on the bad days. This was a bad day. I get to the station to catch my train at the same time I always do. And I’m waiting but at first I don’t think anything of it because it seems like I’m always waiting for the train. Then there is an announcement that there are delays. A while after that someone comes down and says they are having operational problems on this line and there will be shuttle buses. So we all troop upstairs from the platform to the station to wait for shuttle buses. I call work to let them know I will be late and find out that my coworker who gets on the train two stops ahead of me has already called with the same message. So I, along with a bunch of other late people, wait for shuttle buses only to be told that the inbound train is coming in but on the outbound track. So we all troop back down. The guy now tells us that there will be a train on the outbound track but there will also be one on the inbound track that will probably be less full so we should try for that one. Only when the train comes there is only one and who is going to count on there being another after waiting for half an hour already. So we all get on and are told that at the next stop we will all have to get off. The train has turned back into an outbound train and is going back the other way now. So now we are all waiting at a different station but at least at this one you can catch trains from both inbound lines. The first train that is going inbound (it took some time to establish which way it was going) was so full they couldn’t close the doors. I didn’t make it on. So I go upstairs into the station where they have a sign that lights up to tell you which track the next inbound train is coming in on. The light says to go to the left hand track so we all go down to the left track and wait only to see a train start to pull into the right side track. We all run up the stairs (completely undignified) across the station and down the stairs on the other side. We make it on the train and everything is fine until we get two more stops down the line where we have to stand by for a few minutes for a schedule adjustment. What? Haven’t we all been waiting long enough? So we finally make it to my stop. But I’m not at work yet, I just have to change trains. I run into my coworker. She tells me her story. At her stop where she was waiting this morning she apparently overheard people who work for the trains looking at a switch and saying things like ‘is it supposed to do that?’ and ‘I don’t think it’s supposed to do that’. Builds confidence in the safety doesn’t it? She, too, had to get off the train when it turned back into an outbound train but she managed to get onto the train I couldn’t fit on. Not that it did her any good. She only managed it because one of the cars was empty and thinking it was out of service was surprised when the doors opened and passengers were allowed to get on. But two stops down the line they decided that was a bad idea and had them all get out and took that car out of service. So she had to wait for the next train. Which just happened to be the one I was on that stayed at that station for what seemed a very long time to make a schedule adjustment. So we got to ride to work together from there and trade war stories. I have never been so happy to get to work in all my life.