I hate the DC Metro.

Below is the chronology of my morning. For those unfamiliar with the DC Metro, you are blessed, and also might want to refer to this handy metro map, brought to you by my sworn enemy: the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority.


7:30: Stumble out of bed. Think "my head hurts. Stupid Kellie. Too much drinking, too little sleep. It will be a long day." I am a prophet.

7:40: Think "where the fuck is my travel mug? Do I have time to care? Which is harder: commuting with no coffee or trying to look?" Decide to forgo the great coffee mug hunt. There is coffee at work.

7:50: Get in my car. Drive to the metro.

7:58: Think "Why are there nearly 200 people standing on the platform?" Brain is fuzzy (see above). Decide it doesn't affect my life.

8:04: Find out some vague information about a delay between West Hyattsville and the Tot. Decide it doesn't affect me.

8:20: Train comes. Hooray! Will be on time to work. Will be able to buy coffee.

8:25: We stop in a tunnel between PG Plaza and W. Hyattsville. I start sudoku. I'm doing the nervous "I'm about to be late and won't be able to get coffee or smoke a pre-work cigarette" fidget.

8:50: We leave our tunnel home, and REVERSE back to PG, where they unceremoniously kick everyone off the metro. We are herded like well-dressed, commuting sheep up the escalator to the bus platform, where approximately 1,000 people stand waiting for buses. It's about 150 degrees. No air is moving, but there are plenty of bus fumes to inhale. I call my boss as it slowly dawns on me that I won't, in fact, be at work in the next 10 minutes.

9:00: The number of people on the platform continues go grow. It's beginning to remind me of Christmas sales at Walmart.

9:10: I've watched 2 buses that are Tot-bound come and go. I've watched men in Armani suits push aside old women and young mothers with strollers to get on buses. I realize I will never get on one of these buses. I am going to die here. Even if I could physically get onto a bus, most are not going to the Tot, or to DC, but instead to lovely places like Twinbrook and Shady Grove, which makes no fucking sense to me. All 1,000 of us work in DC. There is an imminent danger of a bus being hijacked. The good folks at the Metro seem to care not at all. I'm getting a little panicky.

9:11: I call John. He has to be at work in DC at 10:30. We devise what we consider to be a very reasonable plan: drive to the Tot, park, problem solved.

9:15: I buy an iced coffee from Starbucks. Desperate times...

9:36: My knight in a shining Civic picks me up.

9:45: We arrive at Fort Totten.

9:46: There is no parking at the Tot. At all. None.

9:47: We have a mutual breakdown.

9:55: We arrive at Brookland/CUA. There is no parking there either. We park on a
side street, in zoned parking, where John will almost certainly get a parking ticket. Decide we will mail the ticket to the good folk at the metro.

10:20: Arrive a Gallery Place/Chinatown. I wasn't thinking, and so thought it would be best to take the Green to the Blue and Orange at L'Enfant. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It's a 20 minute wait until the next train. I decide to take a cab.

10:40: Arrive at work. Sweaty, almost 2 hours late, exhausted, frazzled, and with my faith in the WMATA completely destroyed.

WTOP has this to say about the whole thing. The article makes no sense. You CAN'T exit without paying. Your metro card won't work next time you try to ride the metro. It'll freak the fuck out and think you didn't pay and not let you in. Then you have to illegally swipe yourself out then in, or talk to a station manager. That's going to take at least twice as long for everyone they ushered through those gates.
These people are idiots.