Lately there's been a lot of talk in the media about politicians and other civil servants who rack up huge amounts of overtime. (Wait, that's the civil servants, not the politicians) We're already aware of MTA attendants sleeping on the job and sanitation workers and police officers who take non-scheduled breaks to sleep, or firemen who use their posts as party central. Lately I've become aware of civil servants who feel they can insult the public because they're protected by unions. These very people are the kind that give the unions a bad name. We've got nothing against the unions except when they protect the bad with the good.
I know of a postal employee who spends most of his working day combing the thrift shops on 23rd Street. Lord only knows what his route looks like. Then there are the workers who are just plain disrespectful. On my way to work one day I was caught in a traffic jam on 111th Street between Amsterdam and Broadway. Lined up and causing chaos were the usual number of double parked cars, which could be driven around, but in front of the pack were a Postal truck and a sanitation truck. The driver of the first was working on sorting out bags of mail while blocking traffic, while the sanit truck guys were hanging out and sometimes throwing garbage bags into their vehicle. When drivers started yelling at the postal employee to move his truck and let them through he looked at them as if they were crazy and continued work. One of the sanit men told the crowd that the mailman was a federal employee. At that point more people started yelling and giving the sanit men nasty comments. He answered with some nasty comments of his own, which I punctuated with my middle finger. At the point one of the sanit workers started banging on my cab door, threatening me and calling me some biological impossibilities. Finally the jam broke and we were able to get to our destinations.
Someday somebody will release a "New York Noise" CD for expat New Yorkers. It will consist of fire and police sirens, garbage trucks, horns and subway sounds. These will be sure to soothe any New Yorker stuck in Florida or some other location with an inordinate amount of silence. At least this disc's listeners will be able to choose when to hear it. New Yorkers themselves won't have this luxury. We'll still have to hear car alarms going off anytime, usually in the middle of the night, during a rainstorm of whenever another car passes. Not that anybody ever answers the things anyway. Which brings us to the next incident.
Tempers were already frayed with 97 degree temperatures when a car alarm sounding like a horn went off. A quick glance showed a truck blocking a car, and people felt while the driver may have been overdoing it a little he was within his rights. When the same alarm went off ten minutes later it was noticed that (a) there was nobody in the car and (b) the car had official plates. I'd started treating some bystanders, including the owner of Milano and the manager of Deluxe with the probable lineage of the car owner, when somebody came into my face with a loud "you talking about me?" I told him his horns were blaring for 10 minutes at least twice, and that he should turn off the damn thing. That was the way the city set them, and he was on the fourth floor of a Columbia building and couldn't hear anything.
"Oh, you're a flunky?" I answered. He then loudly threatened me with jail, which galvanized the crowd and propelled me to new heights. I took my phone and snapped pictures of both he and his license plate. "I'll hsve my state trooper friend run these plates. In this country I can legally call an insensitive boor an insensitive boor without being threatened with jail." Others in the crowd echoed my sentiments and he started to back down.
The very fact that people like this work for the city and state is an affront to any hard working American. These people work for us and not the other way around. And calling the Mayor's 311 is another joke. With over three hundred city agencies its impossible to get action on anything.
But I still like the idea of a New York Symphonies disc.
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