I am a eco-friendly commuter. I ride Portland’s buses and our wonderful (if a bit pricey) Tri-met LightRail system. The entire time, I have a smug look of self-satisfaction plastered on my face, because I know I’m totally awesome for ditching my car.

Okay, that last part isn’t necessarily true. That look I have on my face is because I know that I’m saving hundreds of dollars a year by not parking in a parking lot downtown. That shit’s expensive.

Those of you out there who drive to work every day might think that I have it easy. I don’t have to deal with traffic jams and road rage and morons who don’t know how to merge properly, but this is not exactly the case. No matter where I go, nor how I get there, people seem to bother me. I used to think it was just me. Sitting in a car, isolated from all of the other people sitting in their respective cars, it’s easy to take a step back and think that maybe everyone seems to be going slow just because you’re in a hurry or maybe everyone doesn’t know how to drive properly because they didn’t get to go to Richard Petty driving school like you did.

Riding on a commuter train, I realize that this is not the case. I just hate everyone I have to commute with, be it on the highway or on the rail line. Everyone around me is an idiot and I’m doomed to suffer a lifetime of frustration in dealing with their dumb asses.* Here’s a short, descriptive list of the types of people I hate during my daily commute.

1. Nervous Nellies - These are the people that, when the doors of the train open for new passengers, refuse to move from their spot closest to the door, even though they’re blocking everyone else’s entrance. They hug the doors until their stop, worried that if they stray just a few centimeters from it, the doors will shut on them before they can get off on their stop.
2. Space Hogs - These are the folks who are always carrying way too many bags. They have a backpack, a messenger bag and, usually, a fanny pack. They only ride on the really crowded trains and feel the need to constantly readjust themselves, thus smacking three or four people in the general vicinity with their backpack/messenger bag/fanny pack. Oh, and they’re probably reading the paper and drinking a Starbucks, as well.
3. New Fish - Someone who has never been on public transit in their life and decides to do so at the most inopportune time, rush hour. They fumble around, get in everyone’s way and stare walleyed at the person next to them. They realize right as the door is about to close on their stop that they need to get off and try to shove through four or five clusters of people. Then they proceed to throw a fit so that everyone within earshot (which is everyone on the train) can hear that they missed their stop.
4. Slow Walkers/Cluster Walkers - These two groups often become one, forming a large, 3 to 4 person-wide mass that moves slow enough to make a giant three-toed sloth envious. They’re trailed by a small cluster of red-faced people who are frustratedly weaving from side to side, trying to find an opening to get around them. I’ve walked around parked cars and into the street to circumvent their blockade of the sidewalk. They are also the people that stop dead in their tracks at a crosswalk the instant the sign begins to flash, whether or not there is any traffic present, forcing you to screech to a halt and dart around them.
5. Greenpeace/Fringe Political Movement Pamphlet People - You know those college-age kids that pepper the streets who are too well-dressed to be homeless but too sedentary to actually have a real job? Well, they want to talk to you about their political movement/environmental movement. They want to get you on a mailing list or give you a pamphlet that sums up their cause. It may even be a worthwhile cause, like Save the Dingos or Potheads for Political Fairness, but you don’t care, because you’re on your way home from work. The only objective is to, as quickly as possible, get home so that you can see your spouse/pets/children/couch/beer/bong. On more than one occasion, I have given one of these unwashed/misshaven college dropouts a brush of the shoulder if they get too close. I’m also pretty sure they are the reason that companies invented the noise-cancelling headphones. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we just want to get home.

So, there you have it. A small fraction of the BS that I and every other public transportation commuter has to deal with on any given day. It sounds pretty awful, but after awhile, you become numb to most of it. I find that popping on my noise-cancelling headphones and turning on some Wilco(to soothe the homicidal urges) is the best way to get through it without blowing a gasket. The good thing is, I get home at the same time every day without fail and I don’t waste hundreds of gallons of gasoline every year driving to and from work. For those two things alone, it’s worth the minor inconveniences.

* I don’t actually think that. Okay…sometimes I do, but only when I’m in a hurry or in a really bad mood.

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