A New Terrorist

In the past, I've stood up for New Yorkers. Too often, it seemed, we got a bad rap. New Yorkers are often viewed as heartless, selfish, ignorant people who do nothing but live for themselves. In television shows and movies, New Yorkers are portrayed as unintelligent, arrogant meatheads who have little, if any, awareness of what goes on around them. They are viewed as believing they are the center of the universe. They are given incredulously strong accents to drive home this fact ("hey, yous guys...").

Today, however, I will stand up no more. A city stricken four years ago by the most devistating terrorist attacks in American history, has today been struck by another terrorist: the Transportation Union. The only difference is, Al Qaeda impacted thousands of peoples' lives, while the Transportation Union has impacted several million. Both Al Qaeda and the Transportation Union have absolutely no regard for human interest, and both think solely of their own benefit before taking action.

So today I have an even worse outlook on unions in general - an outlook that, in the first place, was highly negative. After all, we've all driven by a construction site and counted five or more construction "workers" standing around a pothole while one new pee-on is patching the pavement at a half-assed speed that would make snails impatient. While that one new guy earns his rites of passage, the five pot-bellied pigs stand around with their coffees and cigarettes, telling stories of false happiness and amazing sexual encounters that never really happened. It's always good to see my tax dollars hard at work.

What are they striking for, anyway? What do they think they're owed? These people need, at best, a high school education (do they even need that?), and get paid $55,000 a year for driving subways and trains on tracks that could easily be programmed to run automatically. Or are the tollbooths hard to handle? Or is it the bus driving that's the most difficult? Please!! They work a 9-5 job and collect heavily on any additional minutes of overtime they happen to clock while they're hitching up their pants or licking the remnants of a jelly donut from their fingers.

And yet, they strike. Ahh, the Unions. Take, take, take. Clearly, ruining seven million peoples' lives is worth the twenty-five-cent-per-hour raise you may receive out of this nonsense.

So that's it. I'm done sticking up for a city I once called my own. If they're going to be that selfish, why should I care?