Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

When the Job Is One Never-Ending Signal Malfunction

Train operators and other New York City Subway workers have borne the brunt of passengers’ anger over system delays and disruptions.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times

It can begin before the subway even stops in the station. As the operator in the front car slows the train to a halt, the riders on the platform catch his eye and gesture.

“You get this,” one operator said recently, mimicking tapping his wristwatch in exasperation. “You get the finger.”

And the operators have it easy, locked in their cabins alone. When a train stops, the conductor in the center of the train lowers the window. If there has been a delay, a not infrequent occurrence of late, the conductor effectively braces for impact — with the people on the other side of that window.

“My new first name is ‘Mother,’ ” said a conductor — a male conductor — with more than 20 years of experience on New York City’s subway. His new last name is unprintable.

Their colleagues across the Hudson River, the conductors on the New Jersey Transit railroad, don’t have it any better. “You’re getting yelled at. You’re getting smart remarks. People don’t want to pay,” said a conductor on various lines servicing northern New Jersey. If someone won’t pay, the conductor shrugs and moves on. “I’m not a bouncer,” he said.

It’s a tough time to work on the rails that move millions of people to and around New York City every day. Subway delays and disruptions have become expected and planned for in one’s schedule, while the Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit, two of the nation’s busiest commuter lines, have been dogged by derailments and have warned riders to be prepared for a “summer of hell” as Amtrak repairs deteriorating infrastructure at Pennsylvania Station.

Riders react, every day, and those reactions are not aimed at the management of the transit agencies or at the two governors, Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey, who control them. Subway and train operators, conductors and station agents spoke of the toll of being the faces of their increasingly unreliable systems. They are voices grimly familiar to riders on the train, via vague announcements — “we should be moving shortly” — but not often heard speaking about their work. Their tribulations are lost in the complaints of the passengers.

Several of them described their existence as readily available punching bags, but only on the condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to be quoted without authorization from their employers.

Lynwood Whichard, a recording secretary with the Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents subway workers, hears constant complaints from employees in the stations: “Verbally abused, cursed, spit on,” he said. “People are hostile.”

Stephen Burkert, a New Jersey Transit union leader, said the situation for his members had become similarly volatile.

“My conductors, on a weekly basis, are either verbally or physically assaulted,” he said. Two assaults were reported recently, he said, including one against a female conductor who required medical attention after she was pushed into a train wall.

The New York City Police Department said 22 assaults on subway workers had been reported so far this year, as of June 12, an average of almost one a week. Last year there were 28 assaults on workers for the entire year.

“We get frustrated, too,” said a subway train operator of 16 years who would only give his first name, Michael, speaking in the break room for transit workers at the Coney Island terminal. “We want to get off the train more quickly than they do.”

Image
A B train pulling away from a station. Across the Hudson, New Jersey Transit workers also told of the abuse they received from passengers.Credit...Stephen Speranza for The New York Times

The job is different now, he said. “I used to have some satisfaction in it, but that’s changed,” he said. He takes the subway to work, and he said he was careful that his uniform did not show under his jacket so as not to invite complaints.

The conductor who called himself “Mother” said people brought their problems from home to the subway station. “They bum-rush the conductor,” he said. Whenever he is confronted by a crowd of angry passengers, he tells them: “Get one representative, come to me. I’ll tell you, and you tell them.”

Another conductor said she was regularly frustrated by passengers who miss announcements of service changes because they’re wearing earbuds or headphones. “They’ll pull the thing out of their ear, ‘What’s going on? You didn’t say anything.’ ” And they demand answers she doesn’t have. “I’m not a fortuneteller,” the conductor said. “I’m not Miss Cleo.”

In the Coney Island break room, she and others paused their conversations to watch a television news story about a stalled F train the night before, its passengers seen clawing at the doors in the hot, dark car. The employees shook their heads and resumed talking.

Station agents face crowds of frustrated riders who turn to them for refunds, called block tickets, when trains are severely delayed or rerouted.

“They curse,” one station agent said during a break at her station in Brownsville, Brooklyn. “Banging on the glass. Pulling on the gate and saying, ‘We’re going to do whatever we want.’ ”

Her response: “I’m silly, so I start rapping,” she said. “It just happened. You should have been here five minutes ago.” She and several other transit employees said they had come to believe that the system’s management would side with passengers in any complaint against them.

“‘The customer is always right,’” she said. “But sometimes they’re not.”

Mr. Whichard, the union official, shared some recent Facebook messages he had received from members.

“Brother it took every fiber of my being and the clerk I worked with for me not to lose my job today,” one read. “A customer spat in my face this morning because he was upset that his card was expired.” The worker continued: “The clerk held me back and that’s the only reason and God saved me from exploding.”

Most assaults are on conductors in their cars with the window open, when they speak to passengers on the platform or as the train pulls away. “We had a conductor hit by a pear,” said Lt. Renee Thompson, a member of the Police Department’s transit bureau. “We had an attempted assault where someone tried to punch a conductor and missed.” In a separate incident, another conductor was struck by a water bottle.

Sgt. Paul Grattan, who is also with the transit bureau, said, “They’re completely defenseless.”

On New Jersey Transit, conductors walk the length of crowded trains to collect fares, in close quarters with passengers who have become so conditioned to lateness, as one conductor said, that they refer to a train that’s 15 minutes late as “on time.”

“It’s gotten that bad,” he said. “Morale is down, the worst I’ve ever seen it.” He gets home late, he said, just like his passengers. “I coach lacrosse,” he said. “I’ve got to call my wife — ‘Bring my stuff. I’ll meet you at the field.’ You miss dinner. You miss kids’ games.” But he is quick to add: “I get paid for that. You don’t.”

Another conductor, with more than 15 years’ experience on the Morris and Essex line, said: “People are at their breaking point. It’s like, ‘Don’t yell at me. I’m just trying to get you home.’ I can’t blame half of them. I really can’t. I’m getting paid to do what I do. Those people paid to be here.”

A subway conductor across the river with 12 years in the system shrugged and expressed a similar sentiment.

“This is the job that we signed up for,” she said.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: When the Job Is a Never-Ending Signal Malfunction. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT