When I (unwillingly) transferred from an office thirty minutes away to an office in the same zip code, I consoled myself with the fact that my daily drive to and from work would be substantially shorter. I could even go home daily for lunch! How horrible could it be?
Well, funny thing; Fate hates commuters. If you don’t work from home, it is destined that there will be something in your path to piss you off on a regular basis. My drive to work is seven minutes in length. During that stretch of road, barely over a tenth of an hour, we have the following (in order):
- Two liquor stores on the intersection of a major US Highway (Route 1).
- A Cowan truck yard.
- Railroad crossing.
- School bus lot.
- A warehouse with loading docks facing the street.
- Donut shop.
- Another railroad crossing.
- Another Cowan truck yard.
- My office.
- County landfill.
Individually, many of these things would be a horrible pain in my posterior, but I think it needs to be pointed out how certain combinations of these things case me great rage, and thus why I feel the need to rant about them.
The Railroad Crossings
These are perhaps the single most frustrating parts of my short drive. Even though they are completely unused (or at least, I’ve never seen a train moving along them), they still cause the most hassle of my entire day.
You see, drivers in my area aren’t the brightest lot. For some reason, when they see a railroad crossing, they seem to believe that means they have to slow to roughly 2 miles per hour while crossing over them. It’s very lucky for them that no trains ever use the bloody things, else they’ll be smashed into bits for their crawling pace.
Compounding this further is the school bus lot between the two sets of tracks. School buses have to come to a complete stop at every railroad crossing. Since there’s an entire lot full of them, it’s not unheard of for me to be stuck behind several buses, each stopping for their own time at the tracks, and sometimes followed by old Granny Gurt and her fear of bumps. (Hint: Going over the tracks slowly makes them feel infinitely rougher than if you simply speed over them).
Oh, but it gets even worse; the county dump just past my building. This means that every local yahoo in a rusty pickup truck fills themselves to the brim with refuse. These are the folks who should drive slow over the tracks. It’s a lose/lose situation; they either slow down appropriately (thus annoying me – they’re moving too slow!) or they go far too fast (thus annoying me – their garbage is strewn dangerously about!).
The Liquor Stores
I’ve nothing against liquor stores, per se. Its the placement that bothers me, in this case. The parking lots for both stores are directly on the road, and that road happens to be US-1. That means that as I’m waiting at the red light (and it’s always red), people are trying to squeeze this way and that to get into the parking spots that I’m inadvertently blocking just by waiting for my light to change.
Why are people buying liquor at 8:30 in the morning, anyway?
The Cowan Truck Yards
Nobody likes being stuck behind a truck. They’re slow to accelerate, hard to see around, and rather loud. Being behind a truck that’s on it’s way to a long haul isn’t quite as bad; once they accelerate, they tend to stay somewhat fast.
Not so with my commute! There are not one, but two truck yards belonging to the same company. This means that most days, I am stuck behind a truck going from one yard to another. I don’t know what they’re doing that requires them to have two offices so close together, but it leads to the trucks staying at a very low speed as they put from one yard to the other.
The Warehouse
This one is actually rather simple. The loading docks facing the street mean that delivery drivers have to swing their trucks out into traffic in order to access the building. Even worse, Cowan never delivers to this warehouse. That means the truck in my way is never going to be a Cowan truck; thus I’m stuck behind said Cowan truck until it gets to their other yard.
The Donut Shop
I have to give it to them; they have good donuts! It’s very nice having a bakery this close to work. If it were a normal donut shop, it would be a non-issue.
But it’s not a normal donut shop. It’s disguised as a business park. I know, it sounds very strange, but when you look at the building housing the donut shop, you don’t think “hey, that’s a donut shop!” You think “hey, why are people walking out of that office building with boxes of donuts?”
The billboard for the shop is rather understated. That’s a shame; they really deserve more business. It’s also a shame because it means people slam on their brakes, either because they didn’t realize there was a donut shop there and they suddenly want donuts, or they were looking for the donut shop and realized they were just about to pass it.
Remember that warehouse I noted above? Directly across from the donut shop. Trucks waiting to get into the warehouse sometimes park right in front of the donut shop, thus causing even more problems as the place is now doubly camouflaged.
In Conclusion…
I had no idea just how much about a seven-minute commute I had to vent about until I started typing it out. Now I can understand why people rant online… it’s a bit therapeutic!
Until I get the inspiration to ramble on pointlessly again, I’ll be lurking in the limelight.
