When did the “customer” begin to be “wrong”? I mean, wasn’t the old saying “The customer is always right”? When did that change? Why didn’t I get the memo? I dunno but something changed and now the customer doesn’t mean shit. (Sorry for the language but that’s how I talk normally and I just decided today that I am gonna talk like I talk and fuck the fucking fucks who don’t like it. If you’re offended stop reading now because it is only gonna get worse!)
The Customer is Always Right Wrong (chapter 1)
I took a train into the city today. I know the “train to the city experience” as good as most because I did it for a third of my life and I know the trains, the stations, the routine (buy the ticket, show the ticket, keep your feet offa the seats and put your luggage into the overhead rack. Don’t talk too loud. If someone is talking too loud keep your mouth shut because you don’t know who’s packin’ and who might whale the living shit outta you if you mouth off. Just get on and get there-pretty much the name of the game.) I bought my ticket. I waited for the in-bound Hudson train and watched the new normal at the Peekskill train station. This new normal includes about twenty or twenty-five heavy, track-bound, construction related machines parked on the western most track between the platform and the Hudson River.
The Hudson River view is the reason (the only reason!) anyone could possibly comment favorably on the beauty of the Peekskill Train Station! There is nothing else beautiful about that train station. It is just a place to get on the train and get out of Peekskill... I wish I had a nickle for every minute I have spent looking out at that majestic river. I watched until I could see the train rounding the bend at the Annsville Creek and the bridge and screech into the station. I looked out over that vista for twenty plus years and it never got less beautiful until today.
Today there were the multitude of afore mentioned vehicles parked between the platform and the view and they were crawling with Metro North employees thinking about work-not doing any, just thinking about it-starting up the noisy diesel engines. They sat and idled there, belching their smoke and fumes. They sat and waited to move them out to the track removal and re-installation at 10:00 am while we, the customers, choked and had no view and yelled at our families to be heard over the din... It was painful. Do you know what twenty diesel engines sounds and feels and smells like when you are five or ten feet away and have no choice but to stand there? It sucks! It is not what the customer paid for, but that’s what they get.
Why, I ask you, could they not position those work vehicles/machines 200 yards further up the track? Why, I ask you, could they not walk up there a short bit and start them where they would not fuck up the eye/ears/nose and throats of a hundred or so “customers” condemned to remain on the platform to wait for the train? I had to laugh when I saw the cautionary signage on the sides of these machines that warns “Hearing Protection Must Be Worn!” No body gave me no Motherfucking hearing protection! I would much rather have been sitting inside of the cab of one of those machines wearing my “hearing protection” and waiting for the caravan from hell to move to the section of track to be worked on today and being paid mucho dollars per hour with little to worry about except keepin’ track of my lunchbox (I saw a lot of lunch boxes out there!) than to be stuck on the platform waiting for the train I paid to take into the Big Apple! Damn Right!
To add insult to injury, the Metro North repair team had roped off a huge section of the commuter parking for their own use. So they could be close to their work while the paying customers park farther away and take an hours ride into the city to get to theirs. My favorite memory from today was the bright yellow forty-thousand dollar pickup truck parked in the shade in the taxi pick up area. Two over-weight “workers” sitting comfortably cool in their vehicle while the taxis struggle to maneuver all day and fight for a fare and sweat in the heat in the sun between trains. Upon arriving back in the station seven hours later I noted the same two hard working employees-being indirectly paid by me and all the other “customers” of Metro North--were asleep in the truck waiting, no doubt, for the end of their very productive shift so they could go home.
I am sure I missed the memo. The customer is always wrong.
