We here at “Adventures in Irony” love theories of humor. Especially theories that let us categorize humors, because “categorize” is ancient Greek for “harangue and declaim.”
We’re fascinated by melancholic, choleric, sanguine and phlegmatic humors. We’ve experimented with these and also with inspirational and expirational forms or “styles” of delivering the various humors. Or, as the crass say, respectively, the retentive and the expulsive forms.
The expulsive form is exemplified by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Garrison Keillor epitomizes the retentive form. He never wrote about Lake Let-it-go.
Inspirational humors find good and celebrate it. The expirational, or expulsive, humors do the opposite. We all need both, as we all must inhale and exhale, hold in and let go.
It is as we recall our past experiments of inward and outward humors that we approach this week’s subject of discussion. Namely, the fact that King County Metro Transit was fined $3,500 by the Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) for not ensuring drivers have adequate restroom facilities and time for breaks.
Reading of this online, my heart raced. I felt humbled by the expanse of possibility. Humor without end as far as the cosmic horizon. I was not worthy. Let this cup pass to another.
But then I had a beer, my raiments shone, and I said, “OK, let’s do this.”
First: $3,500? Are you kidding, L&I? With fines like that once a decade, Metro could save money by passing out Depends.
But we get it. Metro has been besmirched. Good, because they’ve been besmirching drivers. In fact, this fine came about because Metro actually tried to discipline one driver for being late on his/her runs because he/she couldn’t find an adequate toilet.
There’s another besmirching that I want to draw attention to in this regard. I want to point out that Metro’s failure to provide adequate toilets and break times for drivers is a direct cause of no longer having a Ride Free Area (RFA) downtown.
Here’s how that worked: This problem of Metro not having enough rest facilities and now allowing drivers time to use them has being going on for years. Decades. I heard about it in the 1990s. But Metro has always dismissed drivers’ complaints until now. Instead of fixing the problem, they nagged the drivers about being late, even as they shortened break times to get more work out of fewer drivers.
Meanwhile, we had this thing called the RFA. And some people would abuse it and board buses for free downtown, then try to run off without paying when they disembarked outside of downtown — sort of like what happens now on the light rail. Except that Metro, ever so cheap, expected drivers to deal with this nonpayment hustle, and instead of accepting it as part of the business, put more pressure on drivers to deal with it. All of which meant drivers were losing time hassling with RFAabusers, time they needed for breaks.
Let’s say you need to use the bathroom and for some reason, you are prevented from doing so. It could be your boss; it could be your teenage kids; it could be doing extra work you weren’t scheduled to do. What does that do to your mood?
What it does to my mood is it turns me from my usual nicely sanguine or phlegmatic mood into full on choleric, Fourth-Humor-of-the-Apocalypse mood. I go from laid back to slash-and-burn. I destroy villages in my path and heads go on pikes.
That’s what happened with Metro drivers. When they were asked in a survey whether the RFA should continue they generally said no, and everyone took it as an expert no, but it really was a no that lashed out at a good, but hard to manage program that served an important need. Driver anger should have been directed at Metro. The RFA was wrongly besmirched.
It’s good to see the original cause of the complaints finally getting the attention it deserves. Let’s celebrate that.