species under glass

[the_siobhan]

Axel is passed out, and I'm sitting ony my computer with a bottle of wine instead of going to bed. I always do this the night before my day off.

I think I miss working for myself.

-----------------------------------

You know, if I judged soley by the people I work with, I would conclude that car drivers are a bunch of real sad-sack whiners.

See, the office block where I work has parking - for a few hundred people. There are somewhere between three and four thousand working here. They tell you this right during the initial interview. Parking for maybe one in eight people. Do the math.

So people know this and they take the job anyway. And they drive in from Whitby or Burlington, or whereever it is that they live. And they park in the side streets and get tickets, or in the local malls and their cars get towed. At breaks they scramble around to move their vehicles or try to wipe the marks off their tires. And they bitch and moan every single day about how the company doesn't have enough parking for all the employees. To the point where even the people who don't drive will kvetch about it, saying, "I think it's rediculous that the bank doesn't provide parking blah, blah blah".

It's starting to seriously get on my tits.

I mean, these are generally really nice people. I like them. I like working with them. But for some reason they have this idea that because they chose to accept a job in a town where they do not live, it's the company's fault that they can't find a convenient place to stash their vehicle for the shift.

I mean, I travel by public transit, and if I am offered a job in a location where I can't get to work, I take that into consideration and DON'T TAKE THE FUCKING JOB. I have yet to spend any time kvetching that my employer doesn't spend money on sending a private bus to my door to pick me up. I have also yet to hear any of the other public transit users make any such a complaint.

So recently I finally said to a couple of the guys in question, "Why don't you organize a car pool? Several hundred people who live in reasonable vicinity of each other work similar shifts and could participate." They laughed it off. I don't want to ride with him, he smells. Etc. And the next day they were running outside at break and moving their cars so they don't get a ticket from the mall security.

I don't get it.

I'm starting to wonder if the suburbs aren't genuinely an alternative universe.

What I'm listening to right this second: The Clash

Comments

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

you got commuter transit with parking lots in Canadia, right? Fuck 'em then. Laugh when they get ticketed. Tell 'em that they too could ride in a 40' limousine with the liveried chauffeur for $2.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

you got commuter transit with parking lots in Canadia, right?

Yes, (well in Toronto) The ones associated with city trasit are contingent upon buying a monthly pass.

Which works out to $2.50 each way if you never use it for anything else, but that's still cheaper than the parking tickets and towing fees.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Is that before or after they get an income-tax break for buying the transit pass?

[dan-the-tax-man.livejournal.com]

the %15.25 credit on transit fees (and I'm using Ottawa as an example, which is where I live/work), will grant you a $10.86 non-refundable tax credit for every month in which you buy a regular adult bus pass (the cost of which is $71.25).

the average month (52/12) has 4.33 five-day work weeks, meaning that there are, on average about 22 working days every month. Assuming you don't go anywhere on the weekends, the basic cost of a regular adult bus pass is $3.23 per day (a one way, cash fare on the bus is $3.00). After factoring in the transit tax credit, it means the cost is reduced to $2.74 per day.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Before.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

That's what I was thinking: That it seems way easier to just part at a TTC lot an take transit in than go to all that mess.

[sinibar.livejournal.com]

We have parking for, I would think, 90% of employees. The rest just jam their cars into non-spaces and block everyone else in. Then we get the whinging about so-and-so not moving their car or parking like a muppet.

If everyone who lived within a few miles of the office came in by public transport, foot, pushbike or even moped/motorbike, there wouldn't be a parking problem.

This leads me to conclude that car drivers are, by and large, not only a bunch of whingers but lazy with it.

It's not as if it's difficult, I own a car, but I cycle to work because I live less than 2 miles away. It's just common sense to me. Cycling means no parking stress, I stay more healthy and the world is slightly less polluted. Everyone's a winner. I just can't see the problem with it.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Personally I think they should get rid of all the parking for anybody who isn't disabled.

[girfan.livejournal.com]

I've had people repeatedly tell me to get myself a UK license so I have more chances to get a job. I'd like to, but not for that reason. I don't mind public transport or walking to work. On a bus (or when I lived in London, a Tube, or when I lived in Chicago, the El) I can read a book and mostly relax.

Too many people drive and don't carpool, even here in the UK and traffic slows to a crawl and can be a nightmare.

J has been riding his bicycle to work (not today since we have 60mph+ winds) almost every day and not only is he fitter but he is saving a minimum of £50 a month on fuel.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I like having a licence for road-trips and those infrequent excursions to get things that are bulky. I wouldn't go back to having to drive to work if I were given a substantial amount of money for it. It was just not worth it.

[ladystardust-xs.livejournal.com]

They laughed it off. I don't want to ride with him, he smells. Etc.
Those are their excuses for contributing to global warming which has put New Orleans under water, broken up ages old glaciers, is already fucking some African coastal economies, propelled the summer-long fires throughout Victoria (Australia), turned Australia's latest drought into the new status quo necessitating serious water restrictions for the fourth year in a row, and have changed Melbourne's summers into a Sydney summers?

Well fuck them! That really fuckin' shits me!

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

why don't they just take the GO train?? i mean, really... what's the point of living in Southern Ontario if not to be able to use public transit?

that said, often people whine, but still think that what they are doing is the most appealing option. i don't carpool either - i hate being in the car with people, and frankly the only thing i like about my job is the flexible hours, and i'd lose that if i carpooled. i just wish i could take a damn bus.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

One of the guys I work with has a wife who works in the downtown office and she takes the GO train every day.

I've even suggested it to him. Our office is a straight 20-minute ride from Union Station. But he drives. I don't understand it.

[digital-space.livejournal.com]

Having done the suburban thing many times in my previous life, I can say this about the majority of people who deliberately move to the burbs: they feel that getting away from people is their right and that being forced to occupy a vehicle with anyone at all is an offense to their superior lifestyle. Suburbanites like you describe who "try to escape" tend to have little more than contempt from me. Don't want to car pool? They can go fuck themselves.

-- a former suburbanite who saw the light and is apparently rather bitter about some stuff

[redbird]

What I love is people who are so sure that getting away from each other is their right that they spend all day in close quarters, discussing how to continue getting away from each other.

[dan-the-tax-man.livejournal.com]

Had a similar discussion with a friend, about why my wife and I take the bus to work when we could drive. We tried to explain that there is limited parking at any downtown office, and that the government doles out parking passes based on a point system - the further you live from an urban area and from public transit, the more likely you are to get a parking pass, likewise you get more points if you can prove that you are car-pooling (note that access to a park-and-ride site counts as access to public transit, so you have to live really far out of town).

Our friend blew up at us, and started ranting about how our employer doesn't have the right to tell what form of transportation we can or can't use, and that we have the right (yes, you read that correctly, we have the right) to drive our car to work. For us it makes no sense - a city bus starts its route about 50m from our door and drops me off about 10m from the entrance to my building; my wife has to transfer once. All in all it takes us about 30 to 45 minutes depending on the weather and traffic, but is much faster than trying to drive. If we need the car immediately after work, we drive to the nearest park-and-ride and still take the bus downtown.

Are the suburbs a different universe? Possibly. We live just on the edge of the 'burbs, and I think in our condo unit we are one of the few families that don't take our cars to work. People in live in the suburbs are strange. When we can afford a new place we're moving closer to downtown so we can walk everywhere.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I think my co-workers must be operating from the same assumption of "rights". What has me flummoxed is how their rights creates an obligation - and a multi-million dollar obligation at that - in somebody else.

I really really want Toronto to bring in a congestion tax like the one in London. And pour the cash into the public transit system. The smog in this city in the summertime is going to kill me young.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I hear you. I worked in a government place in Ottawa that was a lot like this. There were big commercial parking lots across the street selling daily or monthly spaces, but the guys in my section mostly left their cars on the 1-hour-parking streets and spent the whole day keeping track of whether the enforcement guy had been by and telling each other that the tires had been chalked. Draw your own conclusions about government jobs.

It was probably another example of the classist nature of that workplace as the scientists mostly bussed or paid for parking, but the technicians mostly played tag with the officers. The occasional scientist who got along with the technicians would leave his car on the street and trust the technicians to warn him. People from the suburbs often took the bus/transitway; the street-parkers were mostly rural residents who took a lot of pride in Living in the Country and claimed to have no alternatives to driving but never carpooled either.

I had a car when I worked there, but I mainly just brought it to work when I had car-errands at lunchtime. It used to annoy me to pay the daily rate twice, so I sometimes played parking-ticket-tag too, and probably paid more per month than just paying two daily rates.

[panic-girl.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to wonder if the suburbs aren't genuinely an alternative universe.
Right, you've never lived in them! And they are.

[frogmistress.livejournal.com]

When the gas prices sky rocketed this last summer, the drivers of the large SUV's (who commute all of three miles) were whining. I suggested they ride bicycles. The weather was nice; it'd be great exercise, huge gas savings, etc.

They didn't even bother brushing me off. They just gave me a look and went back to bitching.

Whining is so much easier than actually doing something to fix the problem. That would require effort. *shrug*

I live in an area that has less than stellar public transportation. I would love to take the bus to work. (Just think of all I could accomplish while NOT driving for an hour each day!) But, alas, it's not exactly feasible as they don't run anywhere near the building where I work.

Instead, I bought a scooter to ease my guilty conscience of driving 30 miles one way by myself. Car pooling is almost unheard of down here. I guess our rush hour traffic isn't bad enough, yet, to make people give up their "independence" and ride with someone else.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

What I love are the people here who say the government should step in and do something about the high gas prices.

I always tell them I agree - they should double the prices and slap all that money into transportation alternatives.

I'm sure it doesn't stop them from bitching, but they tend to bitch less around me.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

I'm damn lucky in that my new job pays for my Metropass. I've never ever had a perk like that before. Their reasoning is that people who drive get a free parking spot in the underground garage, so those of us who commute should get a break too.

I've never considered taking a job anyplace that I couldn't reach by TTC or GO. It's just commonsense, ya know? What also amuses and frustrates me is when suburb-dwellers get competitive about who has the longest commute. "I live in Oshawa and I have to get up at 5:30 AM!" "Oh yeah, well *I* live in Cobourg and I have to get up at 5 AM!" And here I'm thinking that it was their own damn choice to live out in the sticks and work in Toronto.

I'm wondering why your co-workers don't leave their cars at a Park 'n Ride lot and take the TTC the rest of the way in to work.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about seeing what I can do to get the company involved in a discount plan for the Metropass. I know some employers do that.

the burbs

[(Anonymous)]

When I lived in Markham I would walk everywhere. I enjoyed it, because I could take short cuts and there were beautiful open parks everywhere. For some reason though, when I walked beside traffic I felt like an asshole. People would yell shit out their windows at me, and it occurs to me that there is a sense of supiriority that comes with traveling in a big hunk of vibrating metal. People feel secure and indipendant in their cars and it makes me wonder if they are treating their cars the same way they treat fashionable clothing as if they wouldn't have an identity without it.

I mean, what the fuck? They were told before hand parking would be a problem and if their not willing to deal with the alternatives, tough shit. I used to carpool with people, and you know what you do when you want to be alone? Close your eyes!!! When you do that, it means "Leave me alone, I'm by myself right now."

Jenn

Re: the burbs

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

People yell at me when I'm on my bike. They're in a machine that takes up ten times the space and goes ten times the speed, but somehow, I'm in their way.

[melete.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to wonder if the suburbs aren't genuinely an alternative universe.

Now that I have left them for a number of years, when I talk to my family about things like this I'm pretty firmly convinced they are their own planets. This is often reinforced when suburbanites move into their first apartments in the city and I happen to live below them.

The rules of engagement out there are completely different. What makes it worse it seems is the flat out refusal by some to acknowledge that they do have different rules and ways of looking at things.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

They move into the city and bring their cars, right?

bcholmes talks about that attitude among the people who live in her building. Right downtown, and they want the city to build more onramps to the highway so they can more efficiently get to the traffic jams where they idle their cars for a couple of hours every morning.

[melete.livejournal.com]

They move into the city and bring their cars, right?

Most definitely. They find it completely disturbing that I manage to function pretty well in the city without a car. The most absurd comment I got lately was from someone who said 'but how do you get out to the suburbs?'

He was completely thrown by the look of absolute confusion on my face.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

"Dragged kicking and screaming, usually."