the grit under our own nails

I don't usually bother connecting with individuals at my subway station on the way to work. My iPod is on, and I'm trying to connect or retain my connection to a sense of happiness, peace and excitement about the day.

As soon as I stepped into the station this morning, I walked through the stiles to head up to the Manhattan-bound side of the tracks. I saw the Middle Eastern man arguing with the station manager in his office, but I didn't want to get involved. There were so many people milling about there, waiting for the train to near before heading up through the stiles, passively ignoring the conversation. I conformed to their example.

I stopped right after I got through the stiles. I could hear the conversation, and I watched for the station manager to realize that all he had to do was get out of his office to help this man for one minute by the ticket machine, and all would be fine. And he would have done his job.

Do you live in New York City? They've implemented this new so-called innovative and customer-friendly idea. Basically, station managers are no longer confined to their offices. They are encouraged to walk around the station, to help out people who need help, and to be more visible. What I have until now found very irritating about this, is that very often what this actually means is that you can no longer find a station manager at all. They're "somewhere else."

I mention this because I want to underline that the station manager was allowed to exit his office and help the man. In fact, that is his job.

But this is what happened, instead:

The would-be passenger tried to use the machine to buy a $2 one-way train ticket. The machine didn't let him. He then tried to buy the $2 ticket from the station manager. The manager refused and told him to buy it from the machine. He told the manager that the machine wouldn't let him. The manager continued to refuse to sell it to him. He also refused to go to the machine with the man to see what was wrong. "So what am I supposed to do?" the man cried out, frustrated.

And everyone just stood around and listened. I did too.

I don't know if it was because the guy was of Middle Eastern appearance. I don't know if this station manager was just used to not helping people. But it was shameful. It reminded me of the type of abuse that some people in authority used to heap on me in Moscow. It's humiliating. To have one's difficulty with a language and vulnerability in a foreign land be on display before others.

I went back through the stiles and to the machine. It was working but slowly. And then I saw what may have been the problem. The man was using a $2 bill--which is mostly out of currency now. I turned to the station manager and asked him if it would work, even as it spit it back out. The station manager said nothing, but changed the $2 bill for two $1 coins. And the man got his ticket.

That's all it took.

I thought about talking to the station manager afterward. In a decent tone of voice, but to press upon him that he had been unhelpful to a man whose first language wasn't English. He had been aloof and unwilling to try to understand the man. He had brushed him away. He had not treated him like an equal, like a human being deserving of as much respect as him.

The crowd had thinned with the train's arrival. It was just him in his office, and me. I looked at him for a moment.

But I hate conflict.

And so I didn't.

Instead, because my card wasn't working (certain cards won't work twice in a twenty-minute period, and I'd already gone through the stile), I asked him to let me through. He did.

I feel conflicted. On the one hand, I've come into contact with some obstructionist station managers who don't let a person through if their card isn't working for that same reason, and I appreciate his letting me through. On the other hand, I feel I should speak with him. As a person, heart to heart. Not for my sake, and maybe not for his sake, but for the sake of that poor man who was humiliated earlier. But then I wonder--am I really doing it for that man's sake? Would it make a difference? Or would it just be a salve (for me) with no actual health benefits (for anyone else)? Would any behavior change? I don't know. And maybe that's just my excuse. Because I hate conflict.

I'm not sure I'll do it. Because I'm rather the coward about that kind of stuff, and moreover, that sort of discussion is best had without an audience, and that's not something that is easy to control.

Well, it reminded me that we are sometimes (or more often than not?) horrible to our own guests in this country, and our own new countrymen. We aren't as wonderful as we should be, and as we long to be treated by others. We need to behave better. And that's true of myself, too. I waited damn long, and I've ignored situations before, preferring the safety and anonymity of my freaking iPod and irrelevant plans.

... And it suddenly occurs to me...that I get just that. When I am anonymous in my distaste for an action, when I accept it...I become part of that anonymous blob of difficulty that each newcomer to our country experiences and struggles with, like mud pulling his boots and his mood down, upon arrival to this new country, with all of its new hopes and aspirations, and new fears and realities.

Time to stop being afraid of not being anonymous.