Hard Front/Hard Rear?

Approaching Queensboro Plaza on a Manhattan-bound 7 train last week I was informed by a robo-announcer that the elevator was at the “front of the platform.” ow to me, “front” is a relative designation. I perceive the front of the station to mean the same thing as the front of the train I am on. Thus, seeing as I was in the third car I should only have had to walk the distance of two cars to get to the front of the platform where the elevator would await.

Nothing doing. The elevator was at what I perceived to be the rear of the platform, since it was located nearer to the last car at the rear of the train I was on.

Am I wrong about this? Is there actually a designated hard rear and hard front of a platform? Is it directional? In the case of the 7 approaching Queensboro would that mean the front of an east-west directional platform is always the east end of the platform, even when that aligns with the rear of the train?

Or was the announcement just wrong? I don’t know. I emailed the MTA but anticipate a robo non-answer. With respect to that 7 train arrival I ended up taking the stairs rather than walk the entire length of the platform to where the elevator was, since the connecting train was coming and missing it would have meant a 25 minute wait for the next one.

I need more to do. Yesterday this job had absolutely nothing going on for almost 3 hours. I get so fucking panicky and irritable at those times, taking it out on video games and trying to find details on the high school connection who died last year. I found nothing much in the papers but late yesterday I discovered his dramatic screeds on social media, describing internal physical pain. I’m going to see what more I can find about that. But when a job gives me nothing to do I get jumpy and punchy and yesterday I could have made up for it with another Lorazapam but I do not want to turn that pill into Chiclets.

Okay, it was cancer that got my high school connection. Sounds painful and eternal. Angrifying in the context of social media, he says, where no one wants to encounter bad news. Only sunshine and rainbows, please. He’s saying how chemo changes you and changes how people interact or choose not to interact with you. Apparently he had diabetes, too, and died a relative skelaton of his once stout self. That’s how I remember him, paunchy but joyfully so. In fact, I remember now our connection. I believe it was he who played First or Second Priest next to me in the high school Masque Club production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

As it happens, a co-worker here will be going through chemo soon, maybe it’s happening already. That could be challenging for us all but he seems up for the work to be done. He remains positive and his usual self. 

This is not really a close-knit group, as was advertised to me when I applied for the job. Most of us do not talk to each other, in fact many choose to stare at the wall or floor when anywhere near each other. I don’t know if this will continue or even be exacerbated now that one of us, by far the friendliest, is sick and geetting sicker.