Where Have All the Happy BART Riders Gone?

My blog has been mostly upbeat thus far, but after nearly six months of living here, it’s finally time to succumb to what seems to be a national epidemic – complaining. In all honesty, I don’t have much (if anything) to complain about, but there I go, thinking like the stereotypical “positive American.” (My students tell me that I am one of these, said with an air of incredulity as if they’ve just encountered some mythical being in the flesh. They can’t comprehend how anyone could be so sunny in disposition while not on her fourth vacation of the year.) But here’s the dirty truth: while I am a fairly positive person, there’s one aspect of my daily life that can drive me perilously close to the edge. As James Taylor famously said on The Simpsons, I’m not as laid-back as people think.

You see, I have to contend with the Metro and RER (high-speed commuter train) not only every workday, but also sometimes several times within a workday in order to travel from client to client. And while I love the local public transportation system in and of itself, I absolutely can’t stand the way people behave on it. As the French would say, c’est insupportable. Observe.

In San Francisco, people gently queue up single-file to wait for the BART, and then observe the law of waiting one’s turn to get on board. Yeah, SF may be a utopian paragon of public behavior, but even NYC commuters (and I’m well acquainted) are not as bad as Parisians. When getting onto a train car here, people just do not give disembarking passengers a chance in hell. Sure, some people politely wait off to the side, but many more stampede onto the car right into the flow of disembarking traffic, not even stepping out of the way. Maybe this is why people preparing to disembark at the upcoming stop feel the need to rush at the doors before the train has even pulled into the station. The rest of us get jostled around quite a bit, with no pardon’s, excuse-moi’s, nothing.

The RER is even worse than the Metro. People who are towards the back of the embarking mass feel the need to push the crowd onto the train to ensure they, too, get on. And I mean, aggressively push. And nobody bitches about it, which is the weird thing. I get my glare on, not like that changes a thing – especially not the time I almost got (accidentally) shoved down a flight of stairs within the RER train by a swell of people pushing their way inside.

Sometimes it’s comical. The pushers push just close enough to get one foot onto the uber-packed train car, with the rest of their bodies hanging off the train but ready to smoosh into the crowd on board at the last minute. It’s so delusional. Why bother? One time I blurted out, “Are you fucking kidding me?” when observing not one, but three people trying to do this—they would’ve catapulted right into me. I think my outburst startled them just enough - even if they didn't understand it - to make them lose their nerve. Ha. I win. Psycho commuters, you lose.

I don’t get it. It’s not like we’re in some Indiana Jones movie and the stone wall of doom is being rapidly lowered to seal us into a chamber of scorpions. We all have more than enough time to go about our business in a civilized, timely manner before the train doors automatically close. And the next train is coming 3-5 minutes later!!! So why the man-eat-man antics?

Something else I always love is walking onto a semi-crowded train to find some guy leaning up against the pole in the center of the train car, basically taking up all the real estate that could be used for at least half a dozen hands to grab onto. But no, he has to keep on leaning and then gets all self-righteously indignant if the person adjacent (who, by the way, has NOTHING to hold onto and can therefore only rely on her former yoga practice to help manage her balance on the constantly swerving train—I mean, it can be a fun game except for when she) very slightly bumps into him. And although I’m sure it sounds like it, I’m not talking about an isolated incident, people.

The survival-of-the-fittest phenomenon doesn’t only have to occur on the train, my friends. There’s also a world of adventure inside the station! Parisians will shamelessly cut you in your bid to get on a crowded escalator. Not just merge-style cutting, which is pretty harmless—I’m talking about rushing up to the front of the line, lunging in front of you, overt ops cutting. Just the other day I’d had enough of the cutting and didn’t let this chick have her way in the line. It might’ve been an accident, but right after she got onto the escalator right behind me, her heavy laptop bag just happened to swing right into my calves. Seriously?! (The cutting is not limited to underground escalators. I’ve seen people try to cut even on shorter lines at a handful of places, such as the bakery. Will the extra minute or two of waiting really kill you?)

And then, my favorite move of all: people will stop short, either right at the base of the escalator or right at the top, blocking everyone behind them and consequently creating a pile-up. Why choose this precise moment to stop moving? Is there not a ginormous line of people behind you? You know, the line that you just cut to get on the escalator? Unbelievable how all that cut-throat cunning suddenly gives way to total obliviousness.

Pfew. OK, breathe, breathe, it's gonna be OK. Go to your happy place!

Clearly, I can get worked up about this--when taken in isolation, these incidents are slight annoyances at worst, but they have a way of adding up when you ride public transport as much as I do. So there, I vented like the best of the French complainers and now I can go back to being happy and light and fluffy and laid-back with unicorns and rainbows and pixie dust and all that weird, icky “positive American” stuff. Speaking of stereotypes, someone once told me that the French are impatient. I think I believe that one now.