The best barometer of whether or not you are going to get home on time is the crowd you see coming down the stairs into Penn Station.
If the crowd is huge and just milling around instead of intently walking to their track you know there is a problem some place in the system. At this point all you can do is hope some other poor slobs will be late instead of yourself. Yes, that is a pretty nasty way to look the situation, but you know darn well that everyone is thinking the same thing.
The other item that makes a commuter a bit less of a louse for having such wicked thoughts is the fact, and I mean fact, that even if your line is humming along, while the Long Beach branch is stopped cold, that someday the tide will turn and it will be you sitting in Tracks nursing a beer waiting for the LIRR to fix the problem.
Although sitting in a bar is not a bad thing. I remember many years ago when I was commuting out of Grand Central and sitting in a bar across the street during a delay when the TV announcer said that the tracks north would be shut for at least another hour. The entire place cheered.
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