Oh baby, it's simply appalling

Seriously. HOW. MANY. HOURS can these silly Office Workers From Hell spend discussing maternity leave, pregnancy, and colleagues' reproductive issues? Every damned day for the last year, they have had the same conversation for at least an hour. It's as though they have yet to figure out that women have been having babies and still getting on with their lives for millennia. One of them actually asked the other where statutory maternity pay comes from. Every time she spawns, it has always just magically appeared in her bank account, I guess. They reached a mutual state of being genuinely appalled that after 9 months (yes, 9 months!), money stops coming in. After a year, they have to leave their cushy middle class lives to go back to a cushy middle class job that has been held for them for a year, where they bitch about their coworkers and buy designer handbags. Aren't you appalled? I mean really, it's appalling. Something should be done about this.
I'm sure that their cleaners, manicurists, and personal shoppers and other non-salaried people that make their lives easier would be equally appalled. Never mind that most women in the world do not get paid by the state to stay home and take care of their babies for a year with a guarantee that they will still have a job to go back to when they are ready.
Yesterday was Groundhog's Day. Apparently so is today. And tomorrow...and the next day.

Poor Train Buddy 2.0

This morning, TB2 had a ton of work and an imminent deadline. In order to ensure that I didn't distract him, I sat at the other end of the carriage and had a lovely chat with The Profs.
About 40 minutes in, TB2 staggered down the aisle looking shellshocked. The poor man had found himself surrounded by the Office Workers From Hell. Their inane chatter is impossible to tune out. Even the most committed reader will find their horribleness seeping into his brain. Poor, poor man. Hopefully, he will make his 1pm submission cutoff and the OWFH will get stuck in a lift.

6 of one, half a dozen of another

In what I thought was a crafty evasive manoeuvre to avoid sitting within earshot of the Office Workers from Hell, this morning I chose a carriage I don't normally travel in. Instead, I've been saddled with a grunting table hog who is incapable of covering his mouth when he coughs and am opposite the Retail Nightmares. The Retail Nightmares are basically the OWFH, but in non-designer clothes and with the power to fire the co-workers that they bitch about.
These women may have been the subject of a previous post, so apologies for any repetition. They are apparently regional managers of a mid-range clothing store (Dorothy Perkins or Topshop, I'm guessing). When they aren't talking loudly about their stocktaking and cumulative reports (shortened to "kyooms"), they are making incessant mobile calls. You know, the ones that inevitably end with "Hello? Hello? Oh, I've lost my signal" because we are on a train through the Peak District where there is no reception. They turn everyday words into Proper Nouns in a non-ironic fashion. This may be an effort to make their mind-numbing duties seem important. Example: We should complete the Disciplinaries next.
Where I work, any time there is an "important" policy or form with which we must comply, we refer to it as a proper noun in a tongue-and-cheek fashion to emphasise exactly how unimportant this exercise really is. These women actually believe that the Floor Maps of their jeans rack layout in each department is pressing information that Gemma needs to send over immediately.
I can't decide which carriage's occupants are more distracting and inane. But a change is as good as a rest, right?

Abandoned

Just a little shout out to Train Buddy 1.0. He has finally done the sensible thing and moved to the city in which he works. I'm happy for him, and slightly envious of all of the extra sleep and personal space he now has. Perhaps I might start messaging him around 6am just to let him know when things are running on time or if I find an interesting story in the Metro.

Freakin' me out, man

The guy across the table from me is behaving very oddly. No, not the one all in black with biker beard and tattoos -the guy dressed in a decent suit and well-groomed. Why? He doesn't appear to have just made a court appearance or anything. He just keeps audibly sighing in a frustrated manner, shaking his head and bouncing his legs up and down. At first, I thought he was angry at neighboring loud conversation guy, but that stopped. He keeps nodding off and then waking up very agitated.

Now he's blasting "Insane in the Membrane" while seemingly asleep to the point where his head is lolling and his jaw is making involuntary motions, but all the while his leg is still bouncing. I'm kind of waiting for him to just jump up and go postal.

Train travel can be seriously frustrating, but this guy looks unhinged.

Double the Pleasure

Somehow, I've had the pleasure of sitting with the office workers from hell (OWFH) *twice* today. They have featured in the blog before. This morning, there was some sort of emergency call coming out of the driver's cabin requesting assistance for a seriously ill driver impacting the route. We couldn't tell whether it was regarding our driver/line or not, because OWFH wouldnt shut the hell up long enough to hear what was being said. Apparently, this potentially grave situation was not as important as them prattling on about women they knew who had been pregnant and their maternity leave. I've personally heard them have this exact conversation at least 4 times in the past, so it wasn't exactly compelling. Luckily, Train Buddy was there to point out interesting stories in the Metro during our brief delay. Apparently it wasn't our driver, but hopefully whoever it was is alright.

This evening, they've spent 40 minutes being horrible about some woman that they work with who is constantly miserable. I bet the poor thing is miserable because of these vapid, cruel women. I'm wedged in next to Strongbow Guy and am seriously considering asking for a swig of his cider just to make this less painful. Oh wait. He's downed both cans already.

Canoodling

Yesterday, despite having only two slightly overcrowded carriages, I enjoyed my commute. My husband had a meeting in the city where I work, so joined me for the train journeys. Having someone to chat with on a wet platform in the dark was really nice. For once, the person opposite me at the table playing footsie wasn't a complete stranger. It was a pleasant, unusually quiet journey.

At one point however, he did turn to me and say, "Earbud Avenger my arse. There's no noisy people on here". I'm not sure that he was convinced by my repeated assertions that it wasn't usually like this.

When we got back last night to the welcoming bustle of our home city, he reached for my hand and asked me if I always felt like kissing the ground when I got back.

Indeed.

Hurk

Hurk. Huuuurk. This is the sound that one makes when gagging up morning coffee because a fellow passenger does one of the following:

Clips her fingernails, allowing the bits to fly around.

Makes his own contribution to global warming through gluteal methane release. Smells like last night was curry.

Decides to pick his brains, quite literally. We are talking second knuckle here, people.

Makes that sound of sucking phlegm from the nose clear into the stomach. Is there a name for that?

Absently plays with his two veg through his sweatpants like he's watching telly on the sofa.

Hurk.

Cancellations

I recently was told by East Midlands that I couldn't receive reimbursements for cancelled trains during the course of my season pass due to delayed or cancelled trains without specific dates. Luckily for them, I've been keeping track on the handy blogosphere.

I'm currently sitting in a terrible station pub so I can use their plug socket after 2 cancelled trains. The third one is delayed by 20 minutes already, which doesn't bode well for it actually going. If I'm lucky, I'll be getting home at 9pm, only to turn around and leave again at 6:45am.

So far this delay has cost me £16: a sandwich and a coffee because I'll miss dinner, and now a pint for the sake of a plug for my phone. I also had to buy an £8 book because I've been stuck in the station for 2 hours and my laptop battery won't hold out for the whole journey. And I won't get to tuck my daughter in again.

Document that, East Midlands.

Coworker blues

Don't you just hate it when your travel companion is somebody you don't really want to talk to in the office and now you're stuck with for days because of some bloody meeting?

There are two coworkers travelling together this morning. She is reading Shakespeare. He is a bit of a used car salesman. Why can't he see that she just wants hime to leave her to read her book in peace? She's really working the the non-committal "I'm not really interested but won't tell you to shut up" gesture. If you're not familiar, this involves pressing the lips together while raising the eyebrows. The eyes say, "oh really?" but the mouth says, "I'm going to punch you in a second". The expression is accompanied by the slightest nod and affirmative uh-huh, all with only briefly looking up from the book. Eventually, as the pointed looks at her book become longer and her eyebrow raises become shorter, the man decides to stop bothering her.

The silence is evidently too much, and he gradually builds up from shuffling papers to agitatedly bouncing his knee; he just can't keep it in any longer. It's like watching a child play the quiet game. He spews out all the conversation that he's been storing up for the past three minutes and she resignedly closes her book.

What divorce looks like

I like to watch people, and I often pass the time on my journey by
imagining what people's stories are.

The man across the aisle is what I imagine divorce looks like. He's
wearing a heavy gold and silver wedding band on his right hand and
dressed in a suit. At first I wondered what that might signify, and
then I noticed the rest of the ensemble.

He's drinking generic bitter from a canst 4:45pm and has a hole in his
sock. His dress shirt is patterned with pale neon green and orange
squares, which on it's own might be trendy. However, he has paired it
with a tie with fat diagonal stripes in red and blue.

The poor man's entire demeanour cries out that this is a man who used
to be looked after by a woman. Now has nobody to help him dress
himself. I wonder if he has been sneakily kipping in his office.

Train hell

Train Buddy must have done something bad.

He's being punished by the train gods.

Nothing will turn your day to excrement like morning train problems. Our line services 3 of the North's largest cities, and all of the commuter towns in between. Yet, for some reason, the gods often send only enough carriages for approximately half of the passengers. Train Buddy's morning journey was described something like this: unmitigated disaster. Signal failures, cancellations, delays, heaving platform and then 2 carriages rock up. Folks standing from start.

As if it wasn't bad enough being an hour late for work and rammed like sardines with people's asses in his face, he got a booper nearby. A booper is someone that leaves the sounds on their phone keypad turned on [boop, boop, beep, bleep, boop] (see ettiquette post). He probably should have just gone home then, but in his words "aint no-one getting off this train without serious injury, and possibly a crowbar". So, instead he had to content himself with creative ideas for punishing the booper.

This morning, it was more of the same. He's scouting for sacrificial offerings to appease the train gods, so watch out.

I worked from home yesterday and took a later train this morning, thus escaping his fate. So obviously, it's his fault.
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The Microculture

The commuter train is its own weird little microculture. There are rules and customs by which transient visitors are expected to abide.

There are also relationships that, much like a workplace, exist only within the confines of the train. People that have little in common are thrown together in less-than-pleasant circumstances for hours at a time. We each have our own little rituals to comfort us, like a favourite place to sit or a complex assortment of items to occupy us on the journey. Assuming, of course, that we have the luxury of a place to sit.

The "regulars" have plenty of opportunity to scope each other out and choose alliances. Sometimes, this is as simple as a friendly nod of acknowledgement or shared eye-roll at a late train or loud ipodipshit*, or it can evolve into a fully-fledged commuter team.

In this post, I'll introduce some of the cast of characters that are likely to reappear in future posts:

*IpoDipshit- name given to any one of the identical people listening to rubbish music out of headphones so loudly that the earbuds must be facing the wrong way in their ears. Also represented in gesture by a motion depicting strangulation by cord from white earbuds.

Train Buddy- the only other person on this route that goes the full distance. Cool geek that is my default choice (probably to his chagrin) for seatmate and conversation in the mornings.

Comedy Expat- after a conversation this morning, he suggested that he could be called the Manstruator, but that is a post for another day.

Ciderguy- always cracks a can of cider on the train and is an unlucky omen regarding successful journeys.

The cyclist - interesting council worker who apparently runs or cycles to the station each morning but somehow never appears sweaty or smelly. I think he just likes the feel of lycra in the morning.

Nescafe - never says a word, except for when he phones home to check in at exactly the same place on the route every day. In the evenings makes himself a hazelnut nescafe that fragrances the whole carriage.

The Verbose Professors- Profs A and B- often found in a pair- interesting chaps discussing abstract, irrelevant, and sometimes entertaining topics.

Shirt and Tie- quiet and fairly attractive guy that never speaks, but gives off a slight vibe of underlying jerkdom. Good choice of seatmate when I want to get my head down and work.

The Gaggle- loud group of giggly and completely inane uni students that assume that all aboard are supremely interested in their business.