The MBTA: an embarassment for Boston

Well, I just had an opportunity to take our clunky old relic downtown.

I headed over to Riverside station here on the Green Line; it's allegedly a commuter station right off Route 128 and goes through the heart of downtown. Imagine my surprise to find the parking lot only about 1/3 full.

I'm betting the high parking fees don't help...it's up to $5.75 these days, and some of the other lots around the "T" are charging $6. It wasn't that long ago that you could park all day on the Fan Pier, about a five-minute walk from Downtown Boston, for about $7.

In any case, I made the long walk past all the idling trains to the station, which is conveniently placed as far as possible from the parking areas. Reaching the first level, all 3 of the new "Charlie Card" fare machines were broken. Some had duct tape applied over the relevant slots; all had amateurish hand-written signs directing us upstairs.

Upstairs we hardly fared better; the machines seemed to be working, but I had to feed several dollars into it before it finally accepted one. Awfully touchy for a subway vending machine, but I digress.

Boarding the train, it was one of the infamous "Breda" trolleys that had some derailment issues a few years back. Finally, it was time to leave, so they closed all the doors and the lights promptly went out and the car died. After several false attempts, the motorman finally got everything working and we <<>> out of the station.

KA-THUMP! KA-THUMP! KA-THUMP!

Perhaps you're familiar with a "flat spot"....when you park a car in subfreezing weather, it may develop a flat spot on the tires and make some unusual sounds and vibrations until it's warmed up. I didn't think steel wheels did this. Of course that added to the ambiance of the ride; I wasn't certain we were going to make it into town in one piece. Never mind that the car was filthy, the windows had graffiti on them, and the required abandoned newspaper was rattling around on the floor. And these trolley cars aren't five years old yet!

The "Highland Branch" is allegedly a high-speed line....but today that meant about 35 mph. The ride grew longer and longer, and we never seemed to increase speed at any point. Finally somewhere around Brookline the automated station-announcement system finally kicked in, fortunately naming the correct station. It must have gone offline back when the car died, but the driver never got around to fixing it until a half-hour into the trip.

The ride was uneventful until we reached the central subway....then we slowed down even more, if that's possible. It took over an hour to get downtown from Newton....a ride I can do in 15 minutes at the most on I-90 in the clear. (It easily takes that long in traffic, though.)

I shudder to imagine what tourists to our city think....especially if they come from a city with a better subway system, which would be EVERY OTHER CITY ON THE EARTH.

We were just in Washington, DC...and the metro put our system to shame on Inauguration Day. Boston has enough trouble dealing with the average morning commute...I'd imagine the "T" would collapse if a million people tried to ride it all in one day.

Why didn't I see this coming?

Curious thing about hindsight...


I'd say it began roughly 2-3 months ago. The boss lady started asking me questions about what I did that wasn't documented, and was interested in making sure that I had written up instructions for a lot of things. Fairly routine; there's a lot of new stuff that we always do and never quite seem to document it.

Then she started asking questions about my contacts. Wanted to make sure I had a good, direct contact with each of my receivers, and that it was properly noted on the receiver instructions. Again, all good and proper that she would do this; we're a production shop, after all...and if I'm out sick, the work still needs to get done and it's good to list who we need to talk to in case something goes wrong.

About a month ago now, she wanted to know all my email contacts; did I receive any direct communication from my payors, and if I did, these should all be re-routed to the team email address so everyone could have access to it.

But looking back now, what strikes me as unusual is she asked me all these things privately, in our weekly meetings, always prefacing it with "I've asked everyone on the team to do this."

Really?

If this was such a "team initiative", then why wasn't this brought up in a group setting so everyone knew about it?

They were just looking for an excuse; this was planned some time ago and just needed a flimsy premise to put me out the door.

Promise to nightmare

Today started with such hope.

A bright sunny day, heading towards spring, and I'm off to work and an interesting place. In many ways, the dream job I've always searched for.

About ten days ago, I discovered that one of my accounts was sending a bogus report; we weren't doing anything with it. Unfortunately, that meant a client was not getting all their information.

Naturally, it was our fault. Or my fault, because I never picked up on it.

Anyway...we tried to fix what we could, got things in the pipeline to be corrected, and smoothed things over with the client.

To no avail. I got fired today.

I don't have a "seagull manager"...I've had one of those before. This one is different. She came in to another department, and in one of the company's infamous "re-organizations", wound up overseeing my team in a job she really wasn't suited for.

From day one she was after me.

The company does many things, but one over-arching thread is that we're different. Either you "get it" or you don't. She never "got it", and has been constantly scrambling and covering up her own shortcomings.

It's curious; for weeks, I'd tell her the same things over and over, explain the same processes, over and over, and she'd never retain that information.

I used to be team lead. One of the first things she did after taking over was think of an excuse to bust me back to a regular "analyst". The person she moved to team lead is also new; he's doing the job less well than I did, but is her "golden boy", so can get away with it.

Over the past month, I've seen a lot of things I didn't like; so naturally I was blowing the whistle to make people notice. I even heard from friends outside the department that 'something was coming' and to keep my eye on things.

All of that mattered not; I guess it was easier to silence the critic than to take a look at what's broke.

I'm sure the company will soldier on, it's "too big to fail" now. But there's a hole in my former team, my dear friend and office wife is heartbroken, and I face an uncertain future with little or no money in the bank.

Hallelujah.

Rediscovering an old friend

Evevning, folks. It's been a while since I've been in here. Sorry for the musty smell.

I promise to clean things up....maybe even post a thought or two every now and again.