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This picture was taken at 7:10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday morning.\u00a0 I am roughly 3.5 miles away from my final destination, and it will take me 30 minutes to traverse a stretch of road that would ordinarily take just under four, if traveling at the legal speed limit of 55 mph.\u00a0 It is not the fact that this was exceptionally bad that serves as the impetus of this post, it\u2019s the fact that this is absolutely ordinary that it does.<\/span><\/p>\n Actually, that\u2019s not entirely true, because I\u2019ve\u00a0seen<\/span>\u00a0endured it worse before, many, many times.\u00a0 These electronic signs scattered insufficiently throughout the outskirts of the Metro Atlanta area are harbingers of dread and symbols of ineptitude.\u00a0 15-17 actually isn\u2019t bad, as it\u2019s usually 24-26 most of the time, and if there\u2019s absolutely any precipitation, it\u2019s 38-40; the general rule is to add 10-12 minutes to that, which is a more accurate estimation.\u00a0 And if there\u2019s an accident, it\u2019s guaranteed to occur right under the sign, so that there\u2019s absolutely zero chance of you knowing there\u2019s an accident in advance and detour, and that you\u2019ll see the sign just as you\u2019re approaching the calamity.<\/span><\/p>\n Just once, during a particularly bad morning, I\u2019d like to simply see it say \u201cYOU\u2019RE FUCKED.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Somewhere over the course of the last six or seven years, the concept of people working 9-to-5 seems to have vanished, and much to my dismay, has headed in the same direction that I typically prefer to go if the opportunity is there \u2013 earlier.\u00a0 I\u2019m realizing more and more, with every passing day with crippling traffic long before the sun can even rise, that the catastrophic part of the morning rush hour is when the clock leads with a 7, and that this is pretty much the norm now.<\/span><\/p>\n Over the course of the last two weeks, I\u2019ve been leaving the house extra early, since I haven\u2019t been carpooling, and I want to beat the rush, get to work early so that I can leave work early.\u00a0 The time in which I\u2019ve been leaving the house is comparable to when I used to leave the house back in 2007 when I worked in the financial district, which isn\u2019t that far from where I work now.\u00a0 The difference however is completely flipped from how it was back then, because in 2007, traffic was sparse, and I would roll into work around 7:30 with almost no complications on a regular basis.\u00a0 As opposed to today, where traffic is mind-numbingly crippling, and where \u201ca good day\u201d is one less\u00a0mile<\/span>\u00a0half-mile<\/span>\u00a0quarter-mile<\/span>\u00a0minute of congestion before you inevitably hit the wall of cars, completely stopped.<\/span><\/p>\n At first, I thought it was an aberration, and that this couldn\u2019t possibly be the norm.\u00a0 The sun wasn\u2019t up, Metro Atlanta schools weren\u2019t even in operation yet, and that it was simply \u201ctoo early\u201d for people to be up in arms to get to work yet.\u00a0 But with each passing day of dealing with the same shit different day, the harrowing realization began to sink in that this\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0how people are operating these days.<\/span><\/p>\n The sad thing seems to be that with people getting to work earlier, that people should be leaving work earlier, but I think it\u2019s safe to say that that\u2019s not necessarily true either.\u00a0 Traffic at 5-6 p.m. on any given day is still as much of a catastrophe heading home as it has devolved into when hitting the streets at 3-4 p.m.\u00a0 I literally take a completely different route home in the evenings due to the horrendous traffic at night.<\/span><\/p>\n Ironically, earlier in the week, we carpooled once, but the tradeoff was leaving the house substantially later than I would if I were on my own.\u00a0 Sure, I ended up being a little tardy overall, but the thing was that by the time we got to the point of the commute where the leading picture was taken, the congestion was rated back to 13-15 at like 8:45 a.m.\u00a0 Maybe that was an abnormality for that particular day, but also maybe it wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 The bottom line was that traffic was noticeably lighter at a time when traffic is perceived to be at its utmost worst.<\/span><\/p>\n It very well could be the case that the old traditional rush-periods between 8-9 a.m. have given way to 7-8 a.m., and if so, it\u2019s not necessarily a bad idea to try and work my way into a 10-6 kind of workday schedule.\u00a0 But that\u2019s simply not me; I prefer to be earlier rather than later, and especially in an office environment, where I can write out some convoluted reasons why, but it\u2019s easiest to simply chalk up that anyone who\u2019s worked in a stuffy office environment should understand why I say such.<\/span><\/p>\n Suffice to say, I\u2019d like to reiterate, somewhere over the last few years, something has gone terribly wrong, and it doesn\u2019t look like any fixes or changes are going to happen any time soon.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This picture was taken at 7:10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday morning.\u00a0 I am roughly 3.5 miles away from my final destination, and it will take me 30 minutes to traverse a stretch of road that would ordinarily take just under four, if traveling at the legal speed limit of 55 mph.\u00a0 It … Continue reading Somewhere, something has gone terribly wrong<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,15,143,10],"class_list":["post-38037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-fail","tag-og","tag-ohatlanta","tag-traffic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38039,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38037\/revisions\/38039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}