Respect My Frozen Ass

Union President Roger Toussaint talks about “respect and dignity”, obviously respecting the fact that we froze our balls off trying to get to work:

The strike by 33,000 transit workers left some 7.7 million people, from school children to physicians, without their usual way to get around in 21-degree temperatures made chillier by a sharp wind. Some employers sent out chartered buses and vans to fetch their workers, while some people opted to stay home.

Many however, decided to drive, leading to traffic snarls as early as 5 a.m. at bridges and tunnels into Manhattan, as police officers turned away cars that had fewer than the four passengers required to enter Manhattan south of 96th Street.

So in a city where it is polite to avoid eye contact with passengers sitting inches away on a crowded subway, New Yorkers were compelled to hop into cars with perfect strangers in order to comply with the four-passenger rule.

“I was waiting and no bus came,” said Larissa Silver, 38, who lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn and works on Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. “Then a lady pulled up in a car and said, ‘Does anybody need a ride downtown?'”

Ms. Silver, who left her house at 5:30 a.m. to get there by 9 a.m., added: “So far, I’ve been lucky, but this is just the beginning. I don’t know how I’ll get home. I have no idea.”

That’s a three-and-a-half hour commute . . . one way! Respectable!