There is one question that I find to be the ultimate test of ones dedication to hygiene.
Picture yourself working as a subway maintenance person. It's a humid August afternoon when you receive a call over your two-way radio to repair a seat cushion in a Budd-R11 passenger car. Now for those of you unfamiliar with the history of the subway car in North America, Budd stopped making the R11 in the late 1960's. This therefore makes the car in question at least 35 years old.
The said subway car is being held at the main impound yard. If the 30-degree weather (86 degrees Fahrenheit to those of you who insist on treating the Fahrenheit scale in the same manner you treat you childhood blanket with the missing corner) wasn't enough, the yardies seem to have ignored your request to have the doors of the car left open. As you tug the doors release cable you are instantly taken aback by a wave of hot air smelling of natural human musk, old bubble gum, and a scent you have only ever encountered in a gas station restroom during your motorcycle tour of southern Mexico. Fighting back the instinctive urge to stop drop and roll, you enter the car.
Glancing at the service request sheet wedged into your overfilled clipboard you read that seat #83d requires a new seat coil. This intrigues you because to your knowledge there has never been a numbering system on city trains, and furthermore, this particular train only has 60 seats. Ignoring the service request form completely you begin to search the train an eventually come upon a seat covered in a garbage bag and what has to be at least three rolls of duct tape. You decide that this must be seat #83d and begin to unwrap the 2-inch-thick hide of tape. As a result of the extreme heat, the glue on the backside of this obviously substandard grade of duct tape seems to have partially liquefied into a sticky sort of paste. Twenty-five minutes later you peel away the final strip.
With a few quick Hail Mary's and a nod to the gods you remove the garbage bag. What happens next is recorded in your memory as nothing more than a flash of fur and loud screeching. It appears a rat has decided to spend the afternoon in the garbage bag sauna. Deranged by the heat and glue fumes, the rat pounces on your face with lightning speed, and with two quick laps around your head escapes into a hole in the floor. Fighting back the urge to lash out and scream like a 6-year-old girl with a skinned knee, you simply pluck the fur from between your front teeth and mutter to yourself "I hate it when that happens".
Turning your attention back to the seat you discover what you've feared since first becoming aware of the rats presence. The rat or "Jimmy" as you have decided to name him, seems to have been suffering from certain digestive difficulties, the result being a sort of peanut buttery rat pudding with the tip of seat coil sticking out of it. This is no doubt the very coil you must now replace. Due to the situation you decide the coil would best be replaced from the back.
In a flash you whip out your screwdriver, and quickly remove all eight retaining screws. Gripping the cushion by its sides as you pull and remove it from its base. You set the cushion aside and direct your attention to the now exposed seat pan. It appears that over the past few decades this particular seat has been the dumping ground for cold coffee, cigarette buts, nasal tissues, various needles, chocolate milk, dried pieces of mouldy food, and a moderate collection of used prophylactic devices. Reaching into your maintenance bag you pull out a grocery bag and a spatula like scraper. You begin to pry away the tar like residue, with its lake full of many floating objects, when you realize that no one would know if you left the mess under the seat. You decide to leave it and direct your attention to fixing the spring.
Reaching for the seat cushion you realize that when setting it on the floor you set it on the messy ball of melted duct tape. You try to detach it but are unsuccessful. After many failed attempts you stand over it, reach down and with all the strength in your arms and legs, begin to pull. With a tearing sound the cushion frees itself from the gooey mess and is hurdled at mach1 speed towards your face. With no time to stop, the cushion meets your face and the coil, covered with Jimmy junk, is plunged into your left eyeball.
Without delay and without thinking, you attempt to hurl the cushion away from your face. Of course the spring, not wanting to give up its newly acquired ocular treat, plucks the eyeball from its socket. You begin to scream as with your one remaining eye you watch the eyeball bobble-head-dance around and eventually fling the eye into the air like a catapult. It bounces off the ceiling, down the wall, through the toxic seat-pan sea, and rolls across the floor, coming to rest beside a week old apple core. You throw the seat cushion aside and drop to the floor in front of your dirty eyeball.
It is in this particular situation and at this particular point that I pose my question to you:
Does the 10-second rule apply?
From
Brian Bosch
