Night Out With the Blog People of San Francisco!

So last night I went to the SF Weekly Web Awards party at 111 Minna, and it was a rather fun event. I got to meet in person many of SF’s cool bloggers like Casi of SF Noobs and Kevin Montgomery of the always awesome Uptown Almanac, as well as see people like my neighbor Julie of “I Live Here SF” fame, Johnny Funcheap, Brokeass Stuart, and I even took my own picture of Sex Pigeon (now we’re even after he took mine at LitQuake, haha) and a whole lot of other people that I either can’t recall their URL or something so non-inclusion isn’t meant as a slight. Anyway, it was fun, and hey, free stuff.
But that’s not why I’m writing about this evening and going all wannabe society editor on you today. You see, yesterday the N Judah had an overhead wire snap, and the result was a shuttle bus from Sunset to Ocean Beach, and a lot of resulting delays. I just assumed things would take forever so I left early for the event.
Little did I know, however, that the train not only would pull up shortly, but that we had a Super Awesome Train Operator, who did the following:
-CLEARLY AND ACCURATELY explained wtf was going on
-Explained that there were 5 trains stacked behind us, and to avoid a clusterfrak (she didn’t say those words but that’s what she meant) at the tunnel, that she would stop only if someone pulled the cord – if not we’d keep moving so as to avoid problems for Other Owner/Riders
-Moved us through at warp speed through the tunnel
-Continued to be polite and helpful throughout the trip
Muni operator on the N Inbound around 430 on I think car 1507B (or was it 1570), YOU ARE AWESOME.
This resulted in me getting to 111 Minna early so I went and bought a lottery ticket since clearly my luck was good that day. I didn’t win anything off the scratch ticket, but I did get in line early, and was able to have several fine free cocktails made with Vitamin Water and free protein infused vodka (I’ll be damned if I can remember the name) and meet up with lots of cool people.
But I couldn’t help but think how here we had someone doing the job we expect, being good at it, and being helpful to us owner/riders, and yet under the system now, they really don’t get any recognition for it. If you’re a complete f*ck up at Muni, you have a union that will part the sea for you, but if you’re a good employee and put in that extra effort and take pride in your work, you get nada.
I also have to say that as she was being helpful, more than one rider responded by acting like a jerk. I mean, wtf, people? If you want our workers to do the job they’re supposed to, is it really asking too much of you to respond in kind? No one gets hipster dumbass cred or lose your “cool points” by acting like an ass, and you’re not standing up to The Man and the Patriarchal Hate State or whatever it is some San Franciscans feel a need to bitch about when they see a stoplight.
So the next time you see someone taking that extra effort to make your ride a bit better, a “thank you” is in order. It can’t hurt, right? And it doesn’t cost you any money, nor do you lose your cool points.

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3 Responses to Night Out With the Blog People of San Francisco!

  1. david vartanoff says:

    Muni is such a crapshoot. Yesterday’s adventure, the ticket booth thugs @ Powell St being uncooperative about Senior Passes, then the f%&$ you $3.00 surcharge @ 11 SVN, BUT the driver on the 14, calling the stops, getting the wchairs on and off efficiently, He got a thank you from me as I got off. The 10, 12 which were next, again the streets called, everything as it should be. More thank you’s as I got off. Lum & company really need to enter this century and SO DOES Muni mgmt!

  2. joojooB says:

    What do you expect from most of SF? This city is full of young hipsters who move here because they think it is the adult disneyland. (Yes I stole that from somewhere else)

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