I'm staring down a haggard section of track, bent somewhat out of shape by years of metallic, DC powered snakes on steel wheels relentlessly pounding away at them. A Reliable R68, operating motor 2600, manufactured with love from Westinghouse Alstom, is the chariot I'm preparing for the adoring public this fine Friday morning. Twelve track, Stilwell Yard, with Nathan's Famous in the midst.
This machine was born with its 400 some odd siblings in 1986, (probably a non-descript year for Hip-Hop records.) After 55 minutes of inspecting it, from top to bottom, its journals, its shunt, its couplers, MDC's, emergency brakes and so forth, I realize it's ready to take peeps on a dirty ride from Brooklyn's anal crack to the top of the Bronx's fade, and anywhere in between said points, Noo Yawker style.
Well, what's left of those peeps in a viral pandemic that's already killed over 60,000 Americans, and over 200,000 worldwide-and counting.
The message is clear: COVID-19 ain't nothing to eff with. And as a so-called "essential" worker during this social distancing age, where the MTA is running limited train and bus service, and blaring constant warnings for regular sapiens to stay the hell home, I can honestly say, I feel more like a malleable toy in a Rottweiler's mouth than an asset. A mere plaything for the Wall Street bosses that own Transit's debt.
The latest page from the MTA's branding handbook--when it comes to us bus and train operators, conductors, cleaners, track workers, carpenters, fare collection agents--is out in stores now.
It's called, #heroesmovingheroes.
The fearless Calvary in blue, departing from our sanctuary abodes each day to make sure the frontliners can get to work. We have eternal grit in our blood, mixed alongside the steel dust from the rails and fumes from human excrement, and almost definite contact with defiant public ejaculations, the latter from some poor man's Marlon Wayans wearing a green getup. No guns needed for us! Right?
I mean, look at this woman--reserved gait, knowing she's in the battlefield, ready to ride and die for her riders at any moment's notice.
The man operating this bus, looking ahead at all the gaping potholes and street Goombas he'll have to successfully navigate around, all the while thinking, "Gee, I'm sure glad I chose to be part of this campaign, and forego any hazard pay in the process."
And this guy, certainly gazing at the band of kids down the platform, flashing him with "Thank you" messages on paper collages, knowing, sans a doubt, his company has his back during this.
Awwwwwwww...…..
Gabbage. All of it. A glut of utter disdain for our lives, wrapped up in a confectionate, candy coated PR campaign to obfuscate how MTA management has treated us through this entire pandemic. For those not keeping score, at least 100 of my colleagues have passed on from this virus since March 26th. We're heroes? If we're being lionized as such, why didn't our company give us the proper armor before sending us into battle?
Why, on March 2, did supervisors tell a 7 train operator who wore a mask to protect himself from the virus, that it needed to be gone, and that public perception was more imperative than his security? It was when COVID was still the new kid on our streets, but this operator was ahead of the curve. Supervision just gave him a collective "Nah, B," when he stood up for his health.
Why, for the longest time, when it became clear COVID wasn't some fly by punk, but a potential Death Row killer, did they ban us form wearing masks?
Citing the CDC's original guidelines--that only healthcare workers and the sick should use masks, a misguided effort to preserve N95s for those who work near COVID positive people--isn't a get out of jail free card.
MTA reversed positions before the CDC's stance changed, but after a lot of us kicked the bucket. Meaning they could've let us wear them at anytime.
Why wasn't this agency's own pandemic memo, which mandates it stockpile six weeks' worth of N95s, sanitizing wipes, hand sanitizers and the like, followed? Oh yeah, it didn't "contemplate" what medical guidance would say about this disease.
Why did management issue memos at two bus depots banning bus operators from using facemasks to protect against COVID? Nevermind the fact that the depots apparently had thousands of N95s in stock.
Why did I have to come out of pocket multiple times for cleaning supplies my employer should've been providing? Why does our work atmosphere feel less like a safe haven and more like the Simpsons post Season 9--still alive, but rapidly deteriorating?
Heroes? More like agents on a suicide mission. This might as well be Russian Rouette with bullets in 7 of the 8 chambers.
And I'm going again after surviving my last turn cause six of my colleagues are now dead, and the other one just quit. Guess I didn't notice the blood while typing this.
Anyways, bottom line is, we were on our own as far as protection when this began. When TA Chairman Overseer Patrick Foye got the virus, he was asymptomatic, but got a test like it was nothing.
Meanwhile, until very recently, we had to jump through fire hoops with gasoline drawers just to get a COVID exam.
Peep a transit employee Facebook page (which you can't, because they only take transit workers to begin with), scroll down far enough, and you'll see a buncha posts from guys and gals saying they went to CityMD or some other urgent care center for a test with a fever or sore throat and got turned down. Yes, now it's easier for us to get testing. But why the BS to start with?
On Tuesday, March 31, I was headed to the Stillwell Avenue station in Coney Island. Mission of the day?
Operating the Q line, going from next to the overpriced (but still kicking) Cyclone to the old money doldrums of 96th Street and 2nd Avenue. It would've been my final day operating trains in revenue service with a trainer before Transit would've cut me loose, letting me transport passengers by myself.
Just one stop away on the D train, I opened up my favorite Transit Facebook page, took a glimpse and collapsed
(Well, I'm lying-the moment where that verbal over exaggeration held true is coming up in a few more lines.)
"Ok so apparently the screw office dropped the ball, I was ordered under quarantine due to exposure since the 27th and was not told until today. So there are alot of people who will be out due to me being at work," a train operator named Shawn had written. Below that was a list of recent lines he'd worked, with their numbers. There it was: F225. F train, job number 225.Hold on. The guy who trained me yesterday....his name was Shawn. And the job I did yesterday on the F train....was number 225. *Collapses* (Not funny? Yeah, I figured--least I tried, right?)I'd come into contact with someone who'd been exposed to someone who had the virus. So I manically called my track worker buddy to get his input on whether or not I should go into that crew room with the other train operators and conductors and maybe infect them. After he reassured me I was a third party in this chain, I cooled down enough to go inside (and have the dispatcher send me and my classmates home). But that wasn't enough for me. So I called the MTA's COVID-19 hotline. Which proved a great exercise in omega futility. Since I had no symptoms, you see, they not only didn't bother returning my initial message, but said that since I might have a strong immume system, the virus might not be affecting me! So, they definitely weren't signing me up for testing. Nevermind the fact that this virus is very asymptomatic and oh, DID I MENTION THE EFFING PRESIDENT OF NYCT GOT A TEST WITHOUT SHOWING SYMPTONS? WTH?Eventually, I finagled a sweet deal with a Transit-friendly urgent care center and tested negative. But if I didn't have that hookup?I shouldn't have to be near death to know if i have this thing or not. especially with how many of my collegues are dropping--the most of any essential service agency in the city. Over 100.I personally knew at least one of them--Darlissa Nesbitt. She worked Pitkin Yard on the midnights. Lovely lady, always kept to herself. Known for hating to wear the TA-issued boots. Which bit her in the ass the day she fell on it in Canarsie Yard and tried finessing the Authority for workers' comp. A Train Service Supervisor came to the hospital and made her choose between signing a paper to go back to work, or get written up for not wearing the proper footwear on duty. Ouch, indeed.We did the mail train move to the Euclid Avenue Station in January. And that was probably the only time she wore those boots that night. Damn shame Ill never see her again Every day when I go to work now, it's a glorified anxiety exercusse. Yeah, I don't have COVID, far as my test showed. But who's to say 'Rona wont get me eventually here? It might be hiding behind that door to the crew reporting center I'll have to open sometime, blasted out by that sneeze from the old head with 30 years and his papers in his back pocket.Nestled by that bathroom urinal I'm using with the unidentified brownish caking around the base--which seems to be a standard here. Waiging eagerly for me inside that crapmed crew room at 145th Street. My colleagues feel much the same way. And I am trying to get my training classmates more into organizing against these conditions. But they're understandably afraid of what the reprecussions of action might be. Not confident it can work. I can't blame them for feeling that way under this system. Hell, I feel some trepidation writing this. Baby steps. We'll get to sprinting much later on.In the process of writing this, we've run the gamut on opinions over shutting the system down. Some colleagues feel the trains should've sealed shut for a day or week or two for a mass cleaning. Others disagreed, feeling any closures would keep essentials from getting to work. The in-betweens pushed for a partial, overnight shutdown. And it looks like Cuomo's game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe landed on the last choice. Starting in 3 hours and change from this post's publishing, no choo-choos between 1 and 5 am. Mass cleaning of trains and stations during those times. First time evar The City That Never Sleeps will get a transit system that does.Questions remain unanswered. Why now, and not when transit workers began sounding the alarm in early March? Is this a sincere change of heart? Or a knee jerk response to the tabloid style "reporting" attacks on the homeless as "bums" and "vagrants?" Or "disgusting," as that sexy, senior bachelor with the breast rings called that situation recently? Will that language, which normalizes the homeless as collateral, continue unchallenged at the municipal and state level?Will this give the Negro Harassment Police Department carte blanche to violently clear out the homeless, Guiliani-style? This plan calls for the MTA to provide buses and for-hire vehicles to "essentials," during the closure hours. Personally, if I had the power to do so, my way would be something like this: Hire a crap top of Uber, Via, and Lyft drivers as essential rider transporters, pay them REALLY good salaries and designate some thoroughfares as passageways for rideshare and emergency vehicles. Who the Hell should fund a'lla dat? The same schmuck corporations who make billions off their workers' labor while steadily cutting their pay. That mean you, Uber, Via, and Lyft.Make em' put those stolen reserves to use for workers. Course, no chance in Hell those companies would go for that, but if the state gives em enough of a burecratic Indian Burn, who knows? Before this shutdown became official, I spent a lot of time bouncing the argument about keeping things open for the front liners in my head. "But how will EMTs, cops, doctors and nurses get to work if the trains don't run?" My mind was a constant battlefield with generals squaring off on both the merits and risks of killing around the clock operations.
Man, if we close down, those critical people, how will they get to where they gotta be? Others stuck at home depend on the mailmen for their sex toy packages to save themselves from potentially fatal stress. How could we possibly be so evil as to deny them such carnal pleasure?
But the other mind general wasn't as sympathetic
Why are these people framing a shutdown in the context of how essential workers are gonna travel, when us MTA workers are literally losing people like water from this? What you guys are telling me is, we have to die for you to get to your offices and play hero? Fuc**ng Cosco can't even give us preferential treatment cause we ain't "first responders," or as important as the fuzz. But how did their asses got to work?
I find myself more leaning towards the second general, letting my more macabre thoughts take over....
Kinda.
Let's close down! I wanna see all these people who hate transit workers suddenly change tone and verbally fellate us then! Let's lord that power we truly have over their asses!Then the more rational side of me snaps out of it, stops italicizing my thoughts, and goes with the first general, reminding me that there are mostly good essentials who need us, AND give a damn that we're dying by the boatloads. But that other general is steady lying near, ready to continue this war inside my head for the long haul. The everyday struggle. Oh, by the way, I also wanted to talk to you 7 pm essential clappers. Beats actually talking to your spouse for once, huh? I appreciate that.
Kinda.
You'll give us a live gratitude ceremony each night. Yet, a lot of you will go back to calling Transit workers lazy, overpid overtume cheats the instant things return to normal. Maybe not all, but quite a few.Make no mistaes. I LOVE this gig from a purely operational standpoint. Everything from the soothing screeches of wheel flanges kissing curved running rails and traversing switches, to feeling the train body bounce up and down through track hills and dips. The fact that I'm making the train do that. Knowing I brought that that harrowing wail of dynamic brakes entering stations, from my third grade daydreams, to actual life? Yowza. Back in Schoolcar (that's the training program for student train ops), I picked up a reputation fast for being "The Buff." From that day at orientation week where the lady asked us why we were here--I queened out about how many stops there are in the entire system--to strategically placing myself near the train's front cab every time my classmates and I went aboard, so I always went first--I felt home here. It was a love at first sight kinda thing. Only the receiver was an inanimate, 400 ton, 60 foot thing. But that's even more so why this is all upsetting. More reason for me to wanna straight tear ish up. Things aint there yet. And I may--or may not--continue chroniciing my efforts to help Transit get there. In the meantime, call me a former journalist turned train operator voted most likely to have already stolen a train before coming down here.Just don't call me a hero.