CTA Tattler

Oh yah. I am cursed this way. The worst encounter is seeing a coworker during your downtime. Now maybe this isn't the case with everyone, but you just need a break from the people you work with. It just doesn't seem right to see them *again* after spending long 8+ hour days with them 5 days out of the week. Gimme a break!

If you happen to have a working relationship that's comfortable enough in that you don't freak out when you accidently run into a coworker, be thankful.

I keep running into a particular coworker where there are long-term awkward feelings between us. I don't understand. Am I bein stalked or is this really coinkydinky?

I go to the grocery store. There he is. I get on train, who jumps on next stop? I walk down the street.bleegh. Now why can't this happen with the cute ones you *want* to have frottage with? :]

Thank gawd for my ipod and those blase' overhead advertisements on the trains and buses that help you tunnel them out of your field of view.

yes. this has happened to me, too. it's amazing to me how much chicago really is a large small town. i love it for that. i can be anonymous and crazy when i need to be (it's not that small of a town), and i run into 'family' and friends and people all the time in the city. nice.

i saw a good one today, though. there was this woman on the southbound red line today at around 8 am. she was on when i got on a bryn mawr. at one point, she started yelling about the people who had harmed her children. how she wanted to kill every last one of them... etc. etc. i got the impression that they maybe had been in foster care and got abused and stuff.

so, she yells some things for a little while (i can tune that out mostly but not that wheezy guy behind me? BLOW YOUR NOSE, man!), and then...i see something i don't think i've ever seen. this older white woman (the woman screaming was black) with white hair and a bookbag and such turns to her and tells her not to yell. that she probably really doesn't want any help. that she is screaming personal problems out and that's not...whatever. i don't know.

i was FAR more irritated with that lady (so was the screamer: tell me what i can do! you're not offering me any help!) than with the woman yelling. i mean, it seemed clear to me...follow the sheep el rule. ignore, ignore, ignore. don't get into it with someone who is not particularly mentally stable.

somehow, in their conversation, the yelling woman got out of the scolding woman that she worked in the service industry; at an apartment complex, to be more specific. she got off at sheridan, and i wondered where she was going to work.

On the way to work last Friday, getting up to change from the Red to Brown train at Belmont, I turned and said "excuse me" to the guy who fifteen minutes earlier had sat down in the aisle seat.

He was a friend I hadn't seen in six months.

Oh yeah, this happens to me, too. Last year I ran into my own brother, who had been estranged from the family for over a year! Many people who don't remember me, some I went to school with in 1977. No, those are the ones who remember me.

Recently, at the Chicago Red line station with my boss, the priest, and he hadn't ridden the subway in at least ten years. A man, who wears his jeans well, I might add, approaches us and greets my boss. Turns out he's another priest who my boss last saw in San Jose 5 years ago.

The Music Box Theater is another place to run into people you haven't seen for years. True, a lesser clientel, but odd to bump into old acquaintances.