Tag Archives: living in new york sucks so hard

An Excuse Me Excuses All

Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as ,

Kamran and I were recently lamenting the loss of the phrase “excuse me” in NYC. I’ve heard people say that with this many people, it’s just impossible to say it to every single person you ram into on your way out of the subway, but I like to think that because I do say it to every single person I ram into, it keeps me from ramming into as many people. I can forgive people who are in a hurry, I suppose, but the one place where the lack of an “excuse me” really confounds me is the bus.

It’s one thing when I’m reading and not paying attention and someone doesn’t excuse himself before purposely bumping into my bag to teach me a lesson for (accidentally) letting it stick out too far off my shoulder behind me. That I can understand, because I’ve certainly done it myself. What confuses me is when the person next to me in the window seat needs me to move so he can get out but absolutely refuses to excuse himself. I’ll see the woman on my left putting away her phone and book, gathering her purse straps, and putting on her suit jacket, but when the bus stops, she’ll just sit there. Eventually, I’ll look over and ask, “Were you going to . . . get off?”, and she’ll look at me like it’s inconceivable that I might not have known for sure. A guy the other day didn’t say a word to get me to move but just stood up, and I thought, “Ugh, jerk,” but when I got up for him, he smiled and thanked me. What were there people going to do if I decided not to take the hint? Just sit there quietly until the bus doors closed and it was too late?

Well, this morning, a man entered through the front of the M15 SBS bus and then excused himself as he passed a few people in the center to make it back to his friends, who had come in through the middle door . . .

Read the tantalizing conclusion here and earn me a little cash money for your view in the process!

Do You See?

Filed under living in new york sucks so hard, my uber-confrontational personality
Tagged as ,

This morning, a woman ambled out of the bus and onto the sidewalk in front of me without checking to make sure she wasn’t cutting anyone off. I wasn’t in a hurry, but she was walking so-o-o-o-o-o slowly that I couldn’t bear to match her snailish pace. She walked in the middle of the sidewalk, though, not leaving room to pass her on either side. Just as I was stepping off the sidewalk and into the street to get around her, she decided to cross right in the middle of the street, cutting me off again. I was like, “Ohhhhh, no,” and excused myself as I sped around her, hoping she’d notice what a dick she was being but realizing she probably wouldn’t.

And I realized then that that’s the thing I really hate about New York. I can deal with tiny apartments that cost twice what whole houses do elsewhere, and it’s worth it to have to brave subway altercations to not have to drive anywhere, and I’ve learned to cope with having to shop at three different grocery stores because a single one isn’t big enough to carry everything I need.

But I can’t stand feeling like I’m invisible. When that woman stepped in front of me not once but twice, I wanted to yell at her, “DO YOU SEE ME?” When I’m crossing in front of someone and she’s crossing in front of me, and I hang back a second and let her go ahead because she’s wearing some five-inch heels and I realize that my life is much better than hers, and she doesn’t acknowledge me, I want to yell at her, “DO YOU SEE ME?” Or when everyone is waiting in a line to go up the stairs from the subway platform, and one guy comes from the back and cuts right in front of me, I want to tap him on the shoulder and yell at him, “DO YOU SEE ME?”

It’s like the episode of “South Park”, a riff on the movie Manhunter, where the killer ties Cartman to a chair, Clockwork Orange style, and shows the boy a projector slideshow so Cartman can see “all the things he has done”. You think the killer means all of the murders he’s committed, but the slides are all of the man at the Grand Canyon, at Niagara Falls. “DO YOU SEE?” the killer asks as each slide is displayed.

South Park, Cartman's Incredible Gift

Because my being invisible has to be the reason for these crimes against humanity, right? The only other explanation is that these people somehow think they’re more important than I am, that they have somewhere more pressing to be. And maybe this is why people get mean living here. How many times can someone step in front of you just as the train arrives before you start doing it back?

The Time I Lost My Cool After the Biggest Jerk on the Bus Called Me Fat

Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard, my uber-confrontational personality
Tagged as , ,

The last time we left our hero (yes, me), I had accidentally been engaged in a fight with a man so feebleminded that the only comeback he could produce to my most snide comment was, “You need to go on a diet!” I suppose he was one of those men who thinks the surest way to offend a lady is to insult her weight, but little did he know that I’ve achieved my current level of pleasant plumpness by enjoying dinners at the very finest restaurants in town with my beloved. I thought about returning the insult:

“I could lose weight, but you can’t lose ugly.”

“I could lose weight, but you’ll never get back your hair.”

“I could lose weight, but you’re stuck with that tiny–” Brain. Tiny brain.

But I figured that someone who isn’t clever enough to argue without immediately attacking outward appearance–pointing out that someone is black or gay or handicapped as if that person doesn’t realize it–isn’t worth my time, and I really didn’t want to lose any more of my cool, so I just said, “That’s very adult of you.”

“Keep stuffing your fat face, lady!” he called back from four rows away. “Maybe it’ll at least keep you quiet.”

I laughed, because at that moment, I was eating a low-carb, low-fat nutrition bar. It couldn’t have been more ironic.

Read the “exciting” conclusion here!

The Time the Biggest Jerk on the Bus Called Me Fat

Filed under funner times on the bus, it's fun to be fat, living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as , ,

I told you yesterday about my recent resolution to be Holly Happypants on the bus so that I might lead others to good behavior by my example. Well, everything was going swimmingly on the bus the next day, with me not blowing up at a high school kid who was propping his elbow up on my shoulder to help him hang onto the strap, me getting a really comfortable seat one stop after I got on, and the bus being generally uncrowded. By the time we got to Wall Street, there were only a handful of people left, so no one made anything of it when a man began making the longest and most obnoxious phone call.

He was clearly talking to a customer service representative at a company that deals in batteries and started the conversation by angrily demanding to know if they had his particular battery in stock, though he couldn’t actually name the battery. “The one MY radio takes,” he said, as if that was any help. He gave the person his name and phone number and told him or her that his radio looks like an iPod. And then he began berating the person, getting increasingly more aggressive:

“I’m so tired of you people not doing your jobs.”
“Do you have the battery or not?”
“I know YOU don’t know, so go find someone else who does.”
“What am I supposed to do–call back every day until you get the battery in?”
“You’re not educated enough for me to talk to.”
“Give me your supervisor.”
“I want to talk to your supervisor!”

Everything was repeated twice for emphasis and said in the loudest and rudest of voices in the sort of accent that Angelina from “Jersey Shore” had. It was unbearable and almost incredible that a human could talk to another human that way, but we were almost at my stop, and I had that whole pact with myself about trying extra hard to behave myself on public transportation, so I grabbed a nutrition bar from my bag and popped a chunk of it in my mouth to keep myself otherwise occupied.

Just then, the bus stopped at the traffic light before the turn into the Staten Island Ferry station, and people in the back started yelling. The bus has to wait at that light every single day, so there shouldn’t have been a problem, but that day was strange for some reason. Traffic had been inching along all the way down from 42nd Street, the sky was overcast with rain, and this guy had been literally yelling into his phone–the air was thick with tension.

Someone in the back was saying, “The light is green! THE LIGHT IS GREEN! GO, bus driver!” Hilariously, I realized it was the same lady from the day before who complimented my hair and whom I was glad I hadn’t been rude to before despite her totally deserving it.

People began yelling back at her: “The light’s red!” “Check your eyes!” “Be quiet if you don’t know what’s going on!” It was complete chaos, as if everything everyone had wanted to say to one another all morning and every morning was spewing out now.

Someone said, “Some people around here need to get driver’s licenses!”, and I believe she was talking to the woman who didn’t know the difference between a red and green light, but the guy who had been making the obnoxious phone call screamed out, “YEAH! ALL THESE BUS DRIVERS SUUUUUUUUUUCK!”

And at that point, it was just too much for me, and I said, “Oh, my gosh, shut up!” That’s not really a phrase I use, but it had been building up in me for ten minutes, and it came out without warning.

I had been talking into the ether, but I guess Obnoxious Phone Call Guy took it personally and said to me, “YOU shut up!”

Read the super-juicy ending here and get so mad both for me and at me!

Rich in NYC

Filed under living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as

The best way to show you’re rich in NYC is to own a white coat and to keep it dry-cleaned.