When you drop your cellphone on the subway tracks, who ya gonna call?
In New York City, you call the pick-up crew.
According to Matt Flegenheimer in the NY Times, the need for these finders is increasing as travelers seem more distracted than ever.
“The requests trickle through the bowels of the New York City subway system, funneled to workers more accustomed to calls about tunnel fires or ceiling leaks. A problem is reported at Columbus Circle one recent afternoon. A passenger could be in great distress. Delays are minimal, but movement on the tracks has perhaps never been slower.
“So would a crew mind collecting its helmets and hauling its mechanical claw to rescue the turtle — fumbled by a rider — currently plotting its very methodical getaway from Midtown train traffic?
“ ‘It’s a big city,’ a transit worker, Vinny Mangia, had said a day earlier, reciting a mantra of his office. ‘Somebody’s going to drop something.’
“And somebody, if the item is sufficiently treasured, is going to try to pick it up. These are the fishermen of the subway system, cobbling together homemade instruments to pluck items from the tracks and release them to a grateful city.
“Workers have returned a bag of hospital-bound blood and corralled a collection of artificial body parts, scooped engagement rings from the rails and reunited children with stuffed animals. …
“There is the occasional aggrieved passenger, chafing at the response time if a crew is traveling from another call at a far-off station. But almost universally, riders are appreciative. A few have tried to tip the workers, though they say they have never accepted.
“ ‘A little hug, we take,’ Leonard Geraghty said. ‘I usually tell them, if it’s a man: “Take your wife out. Have a good time on us.” ‘ “
More here.
Photo: Sally Ryan, NY Times
Bob Devine uses a mechanical claw to grab a book lost at 34th Street.
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