Just like death, taxes, and the Jets always losing there is one constant in life for New Yorkers. That, my friends, is the NYC MTA Subway system breaking down on a Monday morning!

It never fails. No matter what the weather conditions are, or the time of year, you can almost schedule it like clockwork that on Monday mornings during rush hour you will be greeted by delays. It’s always the same jumble of convoluted double-speak that you can barely decipher being announced on the barely comprehensible public address system. I think this is done on purpose.

As I descended to the subway platform this rainy morning it was nothing but mixed mumbo-jumbo at 8am. The last thing anyone wants to hear to start off the week. As if Monday’s don’t suck enough after a nice weekend that always ends too soon.

“Due to weather conditions in Brooklyn the N and W trains are being re-routed to the Q line tracks. Expect delays.”

Huh? I live on the Upper East Side far away from Brooklyn. I ride the Q to work. Yet, here they were, an N and W train sitting here. With no crew assigned to drive them as we sat there for 10 minutes. Yeah, this makes sense.

“Because of signal problems there are extensive delays on the Q, N, and W trains heading downtown. We apologize for the delay.”

Yup. for the 3,156,378th time the signals took a crap. Oh sure, I really bet anyone at the MTA is so deeply hurt and ashamed at delaying everyone.  Oh sure, that robotic announcement of apology is truly coming from the heart.

“Due to a tree falling across a track in Brooklyn we are experiencing unavoidable delays.”

Ok, that one I can believe as we did have some windy and rainy weather overnight. Gotta give them a pass on that one. Normally, a few leaves and a gum wrapper on the tracks causes the MTA to break down.

After sitting there on the train clueless about what was going on we finally got a crew and they announced this N train was running the normal Q route but making all local stops. Ugh! That’s the last thing anyone wants to hear. Nothing to do but to suck it up and deal. Oh, and this was one of the older trains with the weird 70’s looking Brady Bunch coloring of drab yellow and orange seating, which also smelled like wet dog. Oh joy!

At least once the train got rolling it moved pretty good. After two stops it was packed with commuters. Angry looking people who looked like they were about to scream, or cry. Especially since they had to stand and were all wet from the rain. Don’t even get me started about the lady with the mega-baby carriage who pushed her way into my subway car and whose kid cried the whole ride. Yeah, this made everyone’s nerves feel terrific!

I was only four stops away from my destination when we were surprised  with this doozy. – “Due to a train with a brake stoppage ahead of us all trains on this line are being held by the dispatcher.”

A loud groan could be heard throughout the train car, because that did not sound good at all. Then we heard this – “The conductor in the train ahead of us pulled the emergency brake and is now inspecting the tracks underneath. He thinks something was on the tracks.”

Oh hell no. Any New York subway rider knows that this could be a disaster, because God forbid a person was on those tracks we might be stuck for hours there. None of us wanted to hear that, or most of all know that an innocent person was run over.

Unless it was a clown. Or a mime. Those kind of scary folks. It is Halloween time after all.

After about ten minutes we started to lurch forward, and in no time I was finally at work. No one was run over. No more delays. My regular 35 minute ride to work only took an hour and fifteen minutes today. Bravo, MTA. Bravo. Slow clap.

Happy Monday, Y’all!