jumpers. LINE jumpers!

Long story short, I barely made the train today.

So there I was at the train station waiting in the queue to purchase my tickets from the automatic ticket machine. I was about fifth in line and I knew that the wait had to be for the New York bound train that was just about to arrive. I decided it would be a better use of my time to get my coffee and paper from Dunkin' Donuts first and then come back. I had about ten minutes.

Sure enough, when I returned, the NY train had passed and I was about to be next in line. As I moved forward, though, two women talking to one another stepped in from another direction at almost exactly the same time.

Almost. I was there first. They stood beside me.

They were talking to one another, and only one of them realized that there would be a push to see who would stand where in line. I saw competition in her eyes. She played dumb at first, nodding haphazardly to her friend's chatter, but she kept one eye ahead of her, and when the person in front had finished using the machine, she quickly stepped forward, thus relegating me to a chump who had been cut in line.

Really, I'm a nice guy, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt and quietly allowed her to cut me. I didn't sigh at all. I promise. I hate when people do that.

These were my thoughts. Maybe she knew how to use the machine as well as I do, and would be off of it in under a minute as I would have been. Maybe she had to catch the Southbound train toward Trenton as I had to do, and she wanted to be sure she didn't miss it. Or maybe, unlike me, she was just a selfish idiot. Who knows?

The whole thing began well. She pressed the "English" button pretty quickly. That was a good sign. But the next step, the one that asks the user to differentiate among the Special Promotion, AmTrak and NJTransit tickets, well, honestly, it wasn't a stumbling block for her. But she certainly didn't move on it as quickly as I'd hoped she would.

She then entered her destination: 000, New York City. So it was totally lame of her to cut me in line. Her train had literally just passed. There would be an 8:16 and an 8:21 that she could catch! I could practically hear mine coming.

The next part of this process was where things completely fell apart.

Let me tell you something. At 8:05, during the peak rush commute in the morning, you do not step up to that machine without knowing exactly what ticket type you need. I can forgive a relative unfamiliarity with the machine. Some wouldn't even be that nice, but I say we all gotta learn sometime, even if it is during the morning. If you step up to that machine, though, and don't know whether or not you need a one-way to NY or a round trip to Trenton, then there is going to be a serious problem. Are you coming back, or not? How many times? That is a waste of everyone's time, and when this woman asked her friend if they were getting 10 adult tickets or something else, that's also why I said something to them.

"You know, I have to catch a train in, like, two minutes."

The one who didn't know she'd cut the line got mad. "Yes," she said, "that's why we're all here waiting in line; we've been waiting ten minutes for our turn!"

She was a cutter and a liar. I was there when she had gotten in line. Ahead of me. A minute before. Illegally.

"But you cut me," I said.

She turned around in a huff. Meanwhile, as all this was happening, her friend's debit card hadn't gone through three times in a row because she didn't know the trick to correctly pulling it out after she swiped. She couldn't buy her ten adult tickets for the train that had just passed because her transaction had been canceled. They walked away mad, not wanting to further hold up the huge line that had formed behind them. At least they had the decency not to try again.

Long story short, I barely made the train today. You might be thinking I should buy my tickets ahead of time, or just opt for the monthly pass, but those are topics for another day.

IIIriderIIIII

I ride the train...

I'm a brand new college graduate about to begin my first real job commute, but don't get me wrong - I wouldn't have started a blog about riding the train without knowing about the train. Northeast Corridor, holla!

Sorry.

Because I've never really had a car, I've been using New Jersey Transit for years. I take it to and from my part-time job now, and I'll use it for my new job that begins in September. I take it back and forth to visit friends and family, to go down the shore, to get to New York, to Philly, and to pretty much anywhere else I might need to that's not within walking distance of city limits.


As I move forward, though, and evolve from a "poor student" who takes public transportation as a necessity to a young professional who rides the train for convenience's sake, I'd like to mark my progress. My... NJ Transition, if you will.

It seems as though riding the train is a daily adventure, or at the very least an amusing anecdote, and I think a few people who can relate might get a kick out of my take on things. At the very least, you can bemusedly latch onto the ramblings of a nuanced railway passenger.

IIIriderIIIII



P.S. Sometimes I ride the bus too.