I was looking forward to my badminton match tonight when I get a call from my wife. “The strikes starts tonight at 8pm, not tomorrow!” she says. So I look on the net, all I find are details about the schedule tomorrow. I ask my coworkers and they confirm. I send an instant message to my badminton partner and give her the bad news. We decide to cancel, afraid of being stuck far away from home.
This is one of the biggest strikes in a long time. All the unions are participating. Tomorrow the traffic will be 15-25% for the metro. Already when it’s 100% the metro is completely saturated, with people pushing, shoving, and often arguing just to get on the next train. Even just 50% would be totally unusable during rush hour, but 15%? Forget it. And the 15% was for rush hour, outside of rush hour there will be practically no metro.
I sent an email to my boss and our assistant saying I was changing my RTT planned for next week to take 2 days this week. No sense in fighting a loosing battle I thought. My coworkers started making arrangements as well. The “good” ones were given the opportunity to work from home.
The only metro line operating at normal capacity is line 14, which is completely automated and doesn’t have a driver. That’s pretty cool I thought, replace all the metro drivers with computers and we wouldn’t have this problem. And people are complaining about computers taking their jobs!
Also, what are all the tourists going to do? I came to France three times before I moved here. Two of those trips occurred during a strike. But it wasn’t a total shutdown like this one.
I actually don’t mind them making me late for work, etc. But don’t screw with my badminton matches damnit!!
It’s so funny, because outside of Paris, you wouldn’t even known anyone was on strike. With the exception of the trains, all the other forms of public transport are running at 100%, and there haven’t been any manifs or anything going on.
Badminton?!
See this post