33.) Emergency Exits

To exit the subway, one must go through a turnstile. They are simple enough devices - if you need to exit, just walk through, and the metal bar will rotate forward, allowing you to exit. Millions of people do it every single day with absolutely no issue. Next to these turnstiles, the smart people at the MTA have added "emergency" exits, in case of an EMERGENCY, so large groups could exit quickly and efficiently. When an emergency exit is opened, it activates a loud ringing alarm to notify everyone of the emergency. This all seems pretty straight forward, right? You all have a good idea of what exit you would use given any circumstance? Non-emergency: the turnstile. Emergency: the emergency exit. Good.

I'm glad my readers are so intelligent and understand this simple concept, because there's a whole bunch of fucking lunatics that seem to be extremely confused on how all this works. They think "God, I couldn't possibly deal with a regular turnstile. I think I'll set off an ear-piercing alarm in order to avoid those unbearably complicated devices." Once one lunatic goes through the emergency exit, suddenly every other lunatic has license to use it as well, because "hey, I didn't set it off, but since it's already open, why not take advantage of the nanosecond of time I save going through it? I'm the only person on Earth. No one else is being subjugated to this deafening alarm." Once through, they continue on with their day, completely unaware of all the innocent people standing nearby that now have substantial hearing loss. Lucky for those individuals, there is a train coming, which probably has very well-oiled and perfectly silent brakes.

I'm not sounding too jaded, am I?

Written By Joe Lankheet
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