For New Yorkers with jobs, the toughest part of the workday might be getting to work.
A recent IBM survey shows that the pain of the daily commute for New Yorkers is more painful than in recent years, Bloomberg recently reported. In fact, 23 percent of survey respondents in New York said they would rather be working than being caught in traffic. That is more than double the percentage that said they’d rather be at work in the survey last year.
And New York is a city full of commuters. Roughly 2 million people take public transportation to work in New York, according to the 2009 American Community Survey.
That commute isn’t always brief or pleasant. For those who take public transportation to work, increased traffic or delays mean showing up to work late or missing quality time at home. That can also mean more stress before the workday even begins.
The Centers for Disease Control, which puts its employees to work studying the work-related stress of others, reports that stress leads to increased risks of illness, dysfunction and disease, the CDC adds.
A number of health groups offer stress solutions. The Mayo Clinic, says to exercise, rest, and take a few breaks here and there. If there is time between work and the commute, that is.
Some New Yorkers have also found another outlet to express their frustrations: Twitter.
The latest annoyance stated by commuters on Twitter is that teens — who have started up high school again — are crowding the subway and making the commute more difficult. Other popular topics include being angry and disliking other people on the subway or on buses. (But at least the subway trains are a lot cleaner and more graffiti-free than they were in the 1970s, based on a photo gallery of images from that era.)
Via Storify and Twitter, the story of the New York commute to and from work on Thursday after the jump. Tweet about your own experiences by tweeting with an #nyccommute hashtag.