riff’s rants #2: coffee articulations
Is it really that hard to be considerate of others on public transportation?
Iced coffee sits ominously in an aisle on a crowded crosstown bus (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
[You can follow Mark Rifkin and This Week in New York every day here.]
wow, thanks so much for sharing those crazy stories. it's impossible to predict how anyone will react to any kind of interaction.
Well it turned out OK in the end for you, although the tension of the situation is just horrific!!! I've got two that just happened to me in just the last two weeks:
1. Rush Our Downtown #4 Train to Brooklyn: We all were on the Downtown #4 train to Brooklyn, but it got taken out of service at Bowling Green, and we all had to get out. We all piled onto the next train, and there was a woman with the largest clear plastic Dunkin Donuts cup of a pink fruit smoothie you could buy, filled to the top. She must have been holding it from the lid, instead of the bottom, because as soon as the train began to move, the entire bottom cup of smoothie fell to to the floor and smoothie went all over the floor of the train. Miraculously, all the liquid dropped straight to the floor, and not my beige pants nor anybody else's, although I was only five inches from her.
2. Getting on the #3 Train at Saratoga Avenue in Brownsville: During Spring Cleaning, Ann Marie discovered 2 small boxes of Optimum cable equipment in our apartment that our technician left in our apartment 3 weeks ago during an equipment upgrade. Although it is a two-mile walk, before work, I walked the over to the Optimum Store, which takes about an hour and 15 minutes over by Avenue H and East 45th Street to turn it in. They even gave me a $15 credit for bringing the equipment in after I called their billing department. I then took the B7 Bus north up Kings Highway through Brownsville to the Saratoga Avenue stop on the #3 train, which is on an elevated trestle at this point in Brooklyn. I got off the bus, and made my way to the elevated station stairwell. On the very bottom stop, I see a cellphone playing video. I yell out - who does the cellphone belong to - somebody is going to step on it (worse than knocking over a coffee, for sure!!!). A little kid comes running over and tells me its his. I tell him not not to leave it on the stairs - somebody will step on it. I then see his mother 20 feet away, and I tell her not to let her son leave his cellphone on the stairs, that somebody will step on it either going up or going down. She yells at me, "No, you go mind your own fucking business", and then I proceeded to my job, where I actually encountered nice, normal people.