Entitlement Attitudes on the CTA

Now, I do a fair share of CTA riding these days (though I only take the X49 when I’m going to Daddy’s, but whatever), and I’ve gotten a good feel for it. Like, for example, the language you’re most likely to hear, after English and Spanish? German. German tourists love them some public transportation to get to museums. I once rode in a train car full of German teens. It was great. Granted, I tend to stick to the South Side, so my interaction with wasted, obnoxious yuppies is minimal, but I don’t think that’s for the worse. But in any case, I also have developed, over the years, a small list of pet peeves about the CTA. Most are obvious—like the radical inconsistency of the buses, especially during rush hours, when you’d think they have their science down, as they seem to for the trains (the red line, for example, between 8am and 9am is a thing of beauty. If I get off the 21 at Wentworth and see a Red Line pulling into Chinatown, I don’t hurry, since I know another one will be there by the time I ascend into the station.

But there’s one thing that really, really pisses me off sometimes, and it’s the insane selfishness of some CTA riders. After the flip, I’m going to call out a person in specific, and list the crimes he has committed against the social contract of the CTA. What’s worse, is I feel bad for doing this, since he is, like, a colleague of mine in the department.

I probably wouldn’t be doing any of this if the guy in question didn’t rub me the wrong way when I first met him, when he openly mocked my entire field of study in a really dumb and obvious way. It just seemed petty and bitchy—kind of like this post—but I guess it’s compensation for the fact that his field is made up of gamers (that is, people who have calculated their own armor classes). Ahem. But he’s a good case study for bad travel, anyway, as I’ll show with these two examples, one persistent and one simply committed this morning at approximately 8:35am.

1. When he boards a bus, he removes his backpack, which is the nice thing to do, and plants it on the window seat of an available double seat. He then sits in the aisle seat. This is guaranteed behaviour. I don’t get it, at all. He’s obviously not the only one who does this, but still—he’s the only person who isn’t a ‘tude-sweatin’ teen I’ve seen pull this, I think. Now it’s standard to sort of lord it over both seats if both are empty, especially if, like me, you’ve got some size or some love (I can’t help but drape my arm around the other seat usually). But to explicitly say something like, “not only do I not want you to sit next to me, I’m going to make it so that there’s a fucking production involved for that possibility to even arise“? That’s beyond the pale. Furthermore, I’ve seen him refuse to move when the bus was full. That’s the other thing—those of us who let our prosperity spill into the second seat will still gather our belongings, etc., and try to tighten the scene once the bus starts filling up. I’ve seen him ignore this simple courtesy and continue having a seat just for his (small) bookbag. Absolutely rude. Not to play the martyr, but I’ve covered myself in my bags on the blue line before on the way to O’Hare to make space for others. Now, Ben Chandler has actually tried to get this guy to give up his spare seat, and I’ll leave it to him to explain the success of that.

I just can’t imagine what the hell would lead a person to so inflexibly take over two seats (the body in the window, bag in the aisle is almost ok, since when the bus fills up, you can just lift your bag. It’s a little rude, but it doesn’t make the person who wants the aisle seat feel rude for asking you to move your whole body—just your bag). I saw this on the Red Line once, too, where a bunch of high school kids filled up the car in such a manner, and an old lady was trying to find a place to sit. What’s weird is there was a free double at the end of the car, but she didn’t want it, so she kept hassling this one kid to move his bag. He refused, pointing out the free seat. The lady ended up paging the driver to complain. I couldn’t believe it either. The kid, ashamed, yielded the seat. But what’s the point? Are you that afraid of who might sit next to you? You think people board the bus and look for the skittishest person to sit next to, even with open doubles available? Hell no. Everyone wants a double themselves, but once the car starts filling up, it’s inevitable. It’s part of the contract of riding public transportation—you may have to sit next to someone you don’t know.

2. So if this fellow’s quotidian activities on the CTA aren’t obnoxious enough, I now offer to you the events of this morning. For those who don’t know, here’s a slightly detailed description of getting to Hyde Park from the Red Line. At the Garfield stop, you can catch the 55 (or X55) bus to HP. This involves ascending about two-storeys worth of escalator/stairs, going through a triple turnstile (that is two-way—incoming and outgoing; there are no openings exclusively for egress), and then crossing six lanes of busy traffic. It’s a bit of a production. Furthermore, the bus is, while rather reliable (in comparison to, say, the 8 or the 21), less frequent than the red line, so you tend to have, during the AM, an endless trickle of people cutting across 55th St. to get to the bus stop. Upon a single 55 bus, some three train-rides worth of passengers may try to board, so things get a little tight. Importantly, though: no matter what, within 15 minutes, another bus will arrive. In fact, during the AM, it’s usually more often.

Now the bus stop is rather infamous. It has no cover from the elements (and it was, in our transgressor’s favor, drizzling lightly this morning), is right above an interstate, and, well, just kind of comes across as really scary, allegedly. But not at 8:35am.

So I’m on the Red Line, on the southmost car, as usual. I get off the car with a few other people clearly heading for the UofC (read: they were white on the Red Line south of Sox-35th). I’m following one of them up the escalator and just generally strolling. At the top of the escalator, you can see if there’s a bus coming, but there’s usually too many people to see if there’s a bus already there. Note that, please: there are too many people obscuring your view to see if a bus is already at the stop. I tend never to even try to look, as there are, again, too many people in the way. But the woman in front of me picks up her pace and starts clicking her high heels toward the turnstile. I can see through the sea of people that, in fact, there is a 55 waiting at the stop.

I still can’t figure out CTA drivers, so I tend to assume they wait for nothing, and I wrote off this 55. I figured there was no way to make it without sprinting through a sea of people and then tearing across six lanes of often crazy traffic (actually the traffic at 55th and Halsted is much worse). But the woman is hurrying, so I silently wish her luck and continue at a regular pace. She gets to the turnstiles, and chooses the far right one, as the left one has a line of people coming into the station, and the middle one has an elderly gentleman getting ready to put his card in the turnstile. Just as I watch her get to the turnstile, I see our transgressor sprint the fuck past me and do a nerd jog to the turnstiles. Now, he obviously can’t go through the left stile, as there are like five people lined up in it. So I figured he’d put on the brakes and follow the woman through the right turnstile, like I was planning on doing, except more slowly.

Wrong.

He cut up the middle. Fucking HB plunge. I couldn’t believe it. But what of the old man, this putative nose tackle? What of him, indeed. He was forced to back out of the turnstile that he had been in for a few seconds already, to avoid having this punk white kid literally shove him out of the way. I’m pretty certain contact was made all the same, and some words were exchanged, but the old man was polite and didn’t yell or anything, that I saw.

Again: He made the old man get out of the turnstile so he could go through in the other direction. Where the hell was the fire, especially considering the following: a) I still made it to the 55 by walking calmly and not shoving any old people and b) there was an X55 right behind the 55 that anyone would have made just by walking? I made it to campus at 8:45—well before I had to be there, and well before any class he may be teaching or whatever. There was simply no reason to rush to hit that bus. But what do you expect from someone who rigidly takes up two seats on the bus (which, of course, he did, and then did again today on the busride back to the Red Line)?

Again, I feel bad calling this guy out in particular, since, well, he’s allegedly a colleague of mine, but this sort of behaviour is so despicable that it just drives me nuts.