Reasons to Hate the Commute

#2016 Lily, Whom We Love ~ anonymous

I'm going to say something that's probably going to get me in trouble. But I've kept it in for far too long.

I used to be a maintenance director for the Sinauna.

I used to manage the cleanup crews for one of the stations.

Like all Sinauna employees, when I took the job, I signed a non-disclosure agreement. I've taken measures (I hope) to prevent my identity becoming known, but from what I've been told, staying completely anonymous is completely impossible.

But this story needs to be told.

Tonight I clear my conscience. I talk about a cruel and unusual business practice which has negatively affected me, and my family.

Meaning...

I talk about why it always takes 5 years before the Sinauna gets new trains.

***

Changing train cars is only good maintenance. Plus, it's in the MOA the Sinauna has signed with the Philippine government - new cars every five years or bust.

Nobody questioned that rule. I certainly didn't. It only became relevant to me as a worker for the Sinauna group when I actually had to take care of one.

They choose senior officers from each station to "take care of" a train car. This way, they know who to blame, in case a car assigned to one station is not properly "taken care of".

And the selection process for caretakers is extremely strict. The senior officers need to have been in the company for no less than 7 full years (what a random number, right? I don't know why 7 years, either), have spotless attendance records, have at least 80% approval rating from their own staff, married (preferably with underage and elderly members in the household) and living in an owned house with a sizeable backyard (at least 3 meters wide and 35 meters long) with 20 feet-high climb-proof walling (which will be constructed at the Sinauna's expense if it is not readily available), and have been born on a rainy day.

I don't know how they find enough officers to meet all these criteria, but somehow they do. Every 5 years.

I wasn't in the pioneer batch. I won't say which batch I'm from. That would be too telling.

That means other people have suffered this before me.

***

The car comes in a small box, like you'd put a wedding ring in.

The box is made entirely of a refractive crystal, so you can't really see inside.

You're told the "crystal" is actually a biodegradable material, and there's a seed inside. If you look really closely, you can just barely make out the outline of a tiny motionless sphere, the size of a mung bean. But you can't tell what color it is, or even if it's really a sphere, or something more angular, with appendages. The prismatic effect of the box's surface prevents you from actually understanding what you see.

You're told the "crystal" shell is sturdy enough, but you should still take all precautions to prevent any breakage. Treat the seed like a baby, they tell you, because that's what it is.

As soon as you get home, you're supposed to put the seed inside a pot filled with the special earth-and-metal-filing mix they give along with the box, and care for it diligently for an entire week. "Care" means you're supposed to water it 3 times a day, and zap it once a day, at the same time every day, with the company-issued electric pen. The pen is set at a very low, harmless setting (though you should still keep it out of reach of toddlers and other entities who may thoughtlessly put it in their mouths), and zapping should be conducted until the top of the pot is completely unsettled.

It's an advantage to have kids in the house, because they love doing this. Sometimes the filings on top make nice patterns when disturbed in this manner.

If you do everything right, by the end of that week, you will start to see a sprout. It will look like any sprout, maybe even a weed. Use of the electric pen should stop, but watering should continue, until the sprout is large enough to grow a pod.