1. I understand that you are a lowly overpaid and overcompensated city employee and union worker. I feel for you that you have to sit on your ass all day and drive around a bunch of people on their way to their laughable private sector jobs where they will earn less working full time then you will by working part time. I get how frustrating that must be to you Ms. Tri-Met Driver (on the #12 Parkrose at 10:55 a.m. this morning). I know that it must be tough that the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757 lost in the contract negotiations and now you have to pay a portion of your healthcare costs like normal people. But that does NOT give you the right to hustle granny off the bus because you are behind schedule. Here’s another thing you don’t get to do: be rude to a disabled man needing help getting the seat up so he can manually roll his wheelchair into the space provided. And here’s the next thing you don’t get to do: Attempt to chastise me for helping him. Don’t worry. I’ve already written my letter to the Tri-Met customer complaint department with your bus number. I’m tired of being treated like a second class citizen because I CHOOSE to use public transportation. Yes. CHOOSE to. You are a CITY worker. You applied for this job. If you don’t like it, FIND ANOTHER ONE. But then you’d be stuck working like the rest of us shlubs have to and you just wouldn’t dream of giving up your cushy paycheck just because you can’t stand the people you work for, would you?
While I’m on the topic of Tri-Met inconsistencies, WTF is with all the dogs on the bus and MAX?? Have you not read your own company’s rules for riding policy regarding animals?? Here, let me quote it for you “If you bring a pet, keep it in a carrier”. http://trimet.org/howtoride/rules.htm WHY are you allowing these burnouts to bring their mangy smelly dogs onto the bus? What about when Fido goes native and bites someone? What are you going to do then? Service animals are pretty easy to spot. They usually come with a disabled person, have a vest that identifies them as a service animal and are trained to lay down by their person’s feet and NOT sniff the crotch of people boarding the bus or MAX.
2. What the hell does the “universe” have against taking a fucking shower and getting a job? I know plenty of hippies that work and are productive. I mean, they aren’t perfect, being Liberals and all, but they WORK. They shower. And a few of them volunteer their time and energies to do the things in life that people who truly believe in things do. I’m not saying that this hippie thing is fabricated. (although I personally think Wicca is a bunch of BS. But who am I? I’m a Jew with a Baptist upbringing. I’m sure I’m more fucked up than they are!) All I’m saying is that if you deadbeats look at the people that you are trying to mold your ideas after, you’ll see that there are plenty that live this lifestyle and are doing quite nicely for themselves. I’ve been in the homes of some pretty freakin’ well off hippies. Here it really is in a fucking nutshell: Don’t sit at the fucking MAX platform and cry about how you love Portland but don’t want to be homeless in the winter and how this must be all a part of the universe’s plan for you. NO IT’S NOT. G-d (or goddess or high power or Jupiter or a fucking door knob if that’s what you pray to or even *snicker* the spirit of Carl Sagan) wants you to be productive, work and enjoy work and reap the benefits of work. ‘Mother Earth’ doesn’t want her kids laying around her house all damned day and fucking night sucking off her tit and never moving on to become adults. She (like so many mothers since) has a natural life cycle that NEEDS her kids to MOVE THE FUCK ON with their lives. So why not do your momma a solid? Go take a shower. Cut those nasty fucking turd looking things off your head and start becoming the being that you were put on this planet to be. Nobody likes a mooch. NOBODY.
More public transportation pet policy information: http://www.dogjaunt.com/2009/05/traveling-by-portland-or-public-transit/
Resource for homeless youth: http://www.outsidein.org/index.htm
Resource for adult and family homeless: http://www.centralcityconcern.org/
