Human Psychology in the Bottleneck
If you’d asked me what would bother me most about moving to the suburbs my answers would have revolved around the people and pace, the pulse, or lack thereof, and obviously the food. Thankfully, the culture of the South Orange/Maplewood area of New Jersey in the past generation has managed to mitigate some of these typical suburban side effects. The people are mostly great, progressives, trending between bohemian and yuppy hipster, some of us with an urban flare that gravitates to the area’s longstanding cultural diversity. The food and pulse have a ways to go, and I’m admittedly more optimistic for prognosis of the former. Let’s be honest. Any suburb, no matter how “cool,” is kind of pulse-proof.
Instead, one of the things that has turned out as the most gut-wrenching obstacle to happiness has been New Jersey Transit, which somehow manages to make the MTA look like the PATH. Delays and cancellations like nothing I’ve experienced before. Mercury goes retrograde, a storm comes in, the wind blows wrong, and your train is canceled. Occasionally we are sent from one platform to the next because suddenly the train that was originally announced is out of service. The amount of money I’ve spent on UBER’s to Hoboken to transfer in, at this point might equate to a month’s mortgage, which in SOMA is no small feat.
Penn Station is more than just a depraved vortex of the American dream gone wrong, a haven for the worst fast food at the highest prices, with nowhere to sit, and bathrooms suitable only for those that live in them. It is also a sociological laboratory, an opportunity to observe human behavior, at its highest and lowest, but mostly its lowest. People coming from jobs they don’t love, going home to families they don’t… well, let’s not presume such cynicism… but ultimately commuting, an endeavor that is beholden by few.
It is within contexts like these that we can witness psychological ids at their purist. People feel resentful (of the transit system), entitled (to get where they’re going precisely when they wish), and anxious (that their remaining agenda for the day will be ruined), and in this trifecta are able to release the ethical standards most of us aspire to.
Enter the bottleneck.
It seems whenever a train is delayed, even by ten minutes, when its departure track is finally announced twice as many people are seen surging three times as quickly to the doors for boarding. Where did all these people come from? Were this many people this early for the following train, and why in the name of God is everyone running?
I understand, sometimes for a seat. The day’s been long, your feet are tired, and you deserve to sit, more so than the next guy, who couldn’t have it as hard as you do. And maybe on this day you’re right. Still, this motive is questionable, as one of the virtues of NJ Transit trains is their enormity. Delays and cancellations must be truly dire at the peak of rush hour to preclude one from being able to sit. I have been there. In fact, even once with an acute gout attack. I stood. I listened to music. And I survived.
If we can all be confident that we will get a seat, why the rush? Why the cutting in the bottleneck, as if we are 10th graders behaving like pre-schoolers, as my three-year-old is presently learning how to wait? Is there a headcount after which they shut the doors and can’t let anyone else in, like a nightclub in Tribeca, and if so, shouldn’t we all be dressed better? Is there a discount for earlier boarders? Are the first 100 women free? I’ve seen small groups of friends alpha their way through the line in a way that could only be confronted directly, for which most people have neither the inclination nor the energy.
Although fields like finance, commercial real estate, and business couldn’t be further from my interest or instincts, I can see the potential for being a genuinely good person in the outside world, but a ruthless, cutting shark at work, under the heading of the modern survival instinct that is success. However, when it comes to boarding a train through two narrow doors, I (naively) cannot believe people would not prefer to be kind.
This blog was finally inspired today, by a middle-aged man in the rush, scrambling to get around as many people as possible, finally trying to swerve around some older woman, then having to stop short and hit the brakes, like a reckless driver attempting to pass on the highway shoulder. I thought to myself, much like I do with said death-mobiles, what does this idiot stand to gain? If he’d gotten in front of the old woman there were thirty more people in front of her, single file, in a narrow staircase. He was willing to sacrifice his own blood pressure and respect for others to gain 3–5 seconds.
In another bottle neck, I was on the phone with my wife while taking those inch-steps, updating her on my absence from the dinner table, keeping up with the bottle, but kept getting bumped into from behind. I turned around expecting an instant and matter-of-fact, but instead was confronted by a man taller than me whose body language looked as if he was expecting the same apology. I shook my head and allowed him past, as if he was an elderly woman with a child and/or I too physically infirmed to keep up. Not even a thank you as he nudged by me (as would be in order even in the case of the former), and I could only fathom how difficult one’s life must be to default so rude.
At the inverse side of this equation, when we all get off the train at Penn, are the characters in the aisle who refuse to pause to allow passengers in front of them out of their seats into the aisle. This level of ego and disregard is absolutely fascinating! My wife prefers to presume the best in others, hypothesizing they must either have some great emergency they are late for or suffer from uncontrollable diarrhea. Once in a while one of these might be the case. Though I am yet to observe any such person who appeared to be under great intestinal distress.
We can learn a lot from the bottle neck. We should ask, how would we behave if our pre-school teachers were watching? How would we want other children to behave towards ours? What is the cost benefit of rushing, cutting, even of our own psychological urgency, when there is a 90–99% chance of an identical destination regardless of our choice?
