Hamptons Subway Regrets Bicycle Based Delay

SCENE ON HAMPTONS SUBWAY

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Caro was seen reading the book his wife Ina has written titled Paris to the Past: Traveling through French History by Train while on the subway between East Hampton and Sag Harbor.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

This happens once a year. Happy birthday wishes are offered today, July 3, to Hamptons Subway employee Roz Evenstein, cafeteria worker, 28; Billie Harry, clerk, 31; Tom Happenstance, maintenance worker, 42; Karen Williams, token booth clerk, 58; Harlan McPherson, janitor in Southampton, 61; Rebecca Happenstance, security monitor, 43; Warren Mangatee, diesel maintenance foreman, 37; Anthony Anthony, accounting, 55; Fred Friendless, motorman, 29; Bill Switt, escalator maintenance trainee, 24; Harriet Ackerson, public relations, 42; and R. Bing Marmaduke, vice president, planning, 61.

The explanation for how all these people got to be born on the same day (in different years) and then become Hamptons Subway employees is that three years ago, we had a personnel manager named Norman Honish who was a little odd, but otherwise okay — or so we thought — and he did all the interviewing and hiring here and what happened was, he just felt it would be economical, or perhaps he just thought it would be interesting if everybody he hired for the subway system were people who had the same birthday as he did. (Liked the date? Fewer company birthday cake expenses?)  After it was found that he was doing this, he was, of course, summarily fired, and since then we’ve had this ongoing problem, solved by a big cake in the cafeteria just as he might have predicted, but which we expect will slowly fade away as people either leave the company, get fired, or die off. Meanwhile, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to all of you, happy birthday to you!

ANOTHER BOGUS CLAIM BY THE PRESIDENT

President Donald Trump continues his quest to either buy Hamptons Subway for $1 or get it for free. His latest effort is to claim that illegal immigrants have been streaming into America by walking through a secret tunnel the current subway owners have built connecting Juarez, Mexico, to the Hampton Bays station  It must be shut down, he said. “No such tunnel was ever built,” Commissioner Bill Aspinall said when Trump demanded its removal. “It hasn’t been done,” Trump said, obviously. “And their denial is typical of all the lies Hamptons Subway tells. It proves that it’s true.”

Trump says that by next week, he will declare a national emergency to deal with the situation.

ESCALATORS IN SOUTHAMPTON

Our commissioner, Bill Aspinall, has often expressed the opinion that the escalators down to our platforms are too slow — they were built and installed in 1933 — and this causes both worry to our customers when they see their train coming in down there. and after that reckless behavior, it would be best to try to get newer, faster escalators to speed things up. And so, after a long search, our buying department has bought a new escalator, which we will try out beginning next week as a test in our Southampton station to see how the customers like it. It’s made in Taiwan by the Wei Chin Otis Elevator Company and it is 33 percent faster, has grips on the handrails, and when you get to the bottom, there is a little form you can fill out, if you want, be a big help for us to decide whether to get more, and a bin alongside where you can slip them in the slot. If all goes well, the new escalators will be installed on all our platforms. If not, we can always reinstall the old one at Southampton, since we are keeping the one taken out in a storage room — the old ones last forever.  Thank you.

DELAY REGRET

We regret a 12-minute delay last Saturday in East Hampton when five people with bicycles tried to board the new bicycle-friendly cars at the same time on that platform and all got stuck and mixed up. The jaws-of-life tool that we have at the ready on the platform wall next to the fire extinguisher had to be used to untangle it all.

SUBWAY

Subway, the restaurant chain, which has the franchise to sell their products in their food concessions on all the platforms, is introducing a new two-foot-long Hamptons Subway salami-and-pimento-cheese hero. It is the same as a regular two-foot-long salami-and-pimento-cheese hero, except that those frisky Subway chefs have found a way to attach little square subway windows icings to the sides of the long hero rolls by using peanut butter guns. There is a  $2 premium for these special heroes.

COMMISSIONER BILL ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

This Thursday is our two-for-one swipe promotion. All persons using the system can swipe their MetroCards once as they go through the turnstile and then after they’ve gone through, reach back and swipe it a second time to give a free pass to the person behind them, whether they like it or not.

I’ve never been a big fan of this sort of thing. For me, there’s the price you have to pay, and it’s dishonest to either overcharge or give a bargain or something because people will not be clear anymore what the fair price is after a while.