JERK OF THE WEEK: The Cutter

It was already a lousy trip home: a “gag-me-with-a-spoon” smelly homeless guy on the A train, a 1 train taken out of service at 96th, and then all uptown 1’s running non-stop from 96th to 145th. That just doesn’t work for me.

I opted for the uptown M104 – a dicey move at best. At least twenty people beat me to it, but a reasonable line was forming on the curb. Not too many things in this world as humbling as waiting on a long line for a fucking bus (waiting at the DMV and sitting in the back of a police car come to mind…). It’s so pathetic, in fact, that it can almost feel like a bonding experience.

Maybe this is why my comrades and I almost blew a collective gasket when a short old lady scurried past our well-formed line and up into the bus. The b*#@$ cut us all!!! Not only that, but she took the last damn seat on a packed 104. The driver almost had to lower the hydraulics on the bus so I could pick my jaw up off the street and get into the vehicle. Here she is, smug as a bug in a tugboat. Notice how she pretends to gaze deeply out the window (she’s trying to avoid eye contact with the angry mob of jilted upright riders).

Not even two minutes after I crowned my Jerk of the Week, another fiasco starts up. A lady sitting in the very first seat (the “don’t sit here unless…” seat) has an enormous pile of shopping bags spilling out into the aisle of the bus. People are stepping/tripping over her stuff as they try to board – she does absolutely nothing. Finally, the bus driver shuts everything down, and tells the lady to please move her bags out of the aisle. She refuses. He asks her again. She refuses again.

An old Asian guy stands up and starts yelling at the lady. “You not special!! You not special!!” he screams, waving a bony finger in her face.

She yells right back, “Then get off the bus!!! Then get off the bus!!! I paid my two dollars!!!”

So on and so forth. Two women behind me provide a hushed commentary: “I can’t believe her… She’s in the handicapped seat, too… Well, how do we know she’s not disabled…”

I’m busy putting together an attack on her “I paid my $2” angle; maybe something along the lines of “Yeah, well I paid my freaking $81 this month! My fare went up and yours didn’t! Now move your damn bags”… I tried to capture the sleaze-bag-lady on film, but this is all I got.