Got a callback

[conuly]

Asked where I lived, was concerned that the answer is "Staten Island". FFS, it's not Siberia!

I need to start telling people I'm moving in with a friend in Tribeca. Just straight up lie.

Comments

[dine]

how weird. assuming the job isn't in Wyoming, I'm assuming public transit could get you there vaguely reliably?

[conuly]

People off the Island think that we have to swim to get anywhere, I think.

Yes, public transportation can get me to Brooklyn. (To be fair, I'd balk at a job too far into the wilds of the Bronx or Queens... but honestly, Brooklyn? I can get to Brooklyn!)

[calimac]

Yeah, there's a direct bridge now. People who don't know about it should check it out.

[calimac]

I'm sorry this is causing you grief. I have a friend who used to live in Tottenville, at the very far end of Staten Island, and worked in Manhattan. He managed.

[conuly]

Part of the problem, I'll admit, is that lots of Staten Islanders can be a little cagey on the topic of how difficult the commute really is. It's nice to be able to blame your lateness to school or work or a party on "Well, Staten Island" instead of "I could not be bothered to leave the house on time, or honestly, within half an hour of 'on time', so this is the best I could do".

It is amazing how few follow-up questions there are when you use this power even semi-judiciously.

[crystalpyramid]

Wow! When I worked in Manhattan I had colleagues who lived in Rockland County and I don't think you're nearly that far away. Or for that matter all those public school teacher trainees who lived in Philly for the summer.

[conuly]

I'm on the North Shore. Close to the boat, close to the bridge. But people act like Staten Island is, I don't even know, someplace magical and unheard of.

[ethelmay]

Is Staten Island the one where the boat is actually free, or am I confusing it with a different locality?

[redbird]

Near the ferry puts you closer to some downtown jobs than being in very northern Manhattan, or parts of the Bronx. But it didn't occur to people, when I said I lived in Manhattan, that part of Manhattan is north of Central Park or even Harlem.

When I was living in upper Manhattan, I'd have balked at a job in some parts of Brooklyn or Queens, too. Astoria, sure, but not Rockaway.

[conuly]

The SI Ferry is free, but I think the new Midtown Ferry costs? I don't know.

[conuly]

I know. Before 9/11 - and maybe even today, I don't know - a good ten or fifteen percent of this neighborhood had one or more people working in Lower Manhattan.

[magid]

It’s one of the boroughs of NYC! And shouldn’t it be up to the person what commute would work for them?!

[conuly]

Don't try to grasp how people understand NYC geography...!

[jessie_c]

Do those people not understand the quite simple concept that roughly 100% of New York City is in fact on islands?

[adrian_turtle]

This reminds me of the job I had that asked if I had "access to reliable transportation," as part of the standard paperwork with the contracting agency. I said I did, because the commuter rail stopped less than half an hour walk from the lab. (I actually did own a car, but it was painful and dangerous for me to drive and I did so as infrequently as possible.) A few days after starting the job, my boss saw me walking from the train station in the morning.

He asked why I was walking in the snow, and I told him I took the train to work. He was furious. He did not merely object to the practice of taking public transit, though of course he did. He believed that I had lied to him about an important matter, showing I was a fundamentally dishonest person. And here I was telling him I could do a job that rested on integrity? How dare I!

I don't know if that job would have worked even if I had successfully concealed my nefarious use of transit. Probably not.

[conuly]

You're forgetting the Bronx.

And it's more that we don't have a train that connects to the rest of the trains, and also that most people who don't live here have never been here.

(And also that people in NYC are extremely reluctant to leave their borough to go any further than Manhattan, though they will generally at least admit that travel from other boroughs is possible. Except when that borough is Staten Island.)

[conuly]

Christ, what an asshole.

[jessie_c]

Okay, granted. I live of course on the other side of the continent and pretty much all of my knowledge of New York comes from half-remembered TV shows. But still the Bronx has to be connected with all the islands the rest of the city is on.
On the subject of living on islands, many people who work in downtown Vancouver live on Bowen Island. Yet they can get all the way downtown by public transportation.
And about those TV shows, isn't one of the big points of living and working in New York that you have to take commuter trains to work?

[conuly]

Trains, buses, the SI Ferry - or your own feet, which is convenient.

But people just, they think it's a shorter commute from Vancouver from Staten Island, I swear!

[cellio]

Wow, that's horrid.

[cellio]

Unless it's a matter of tax jurisdiction restrictions, "where do you live?" is not an appropriate question, just as "what time zone are you in?" (for a remote position) is not appropriate. The correct questions are about your ability to get there (for the former) or be available during specified hours (for the latter). How you do that is none of their concern. Feh.

[conuly]

Yeah, but it’s not an illegal inappropriate question, so.

[cellio]

Yeah. Not illegal, just misguided.

[ionelv]

I never lived in NY, so take this with a boulder of salt. I bet lots of Manhattanites think Staten Island is part of Joyzee. This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode with one of the crew getting a new phone number that used one of the new overlay area codes for Manhattan, and everyone balking at the non-local number. There were also a few Seinfeld episodes about the dynamics between Manhattanites and Long Islanders.

[ionelv]

This also reminded me of the famous 1976 cover of the New Yorker in which Hudson River was the figuratively the river Styx. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Avenue

[conuly]

I think they figure that even parts of Jersey are closer - after all, you can just take the train, right?

[ionelv]

Maybe when they hear the word "island", images of rogue waves, Crusoe and the Kraken are lurking at the back of their minds?

[conuly]

Except this is NYC. If you’re not in the Bronx, you’re on an island.

I think what it is, really, is that we’re used to thinking that some of our friends are too far away to go to their homes, we only meet up in the city. But they have no reference for which neighborhood on the Island is way out there and which are easy access to everybody, so they assume it’s all super far from everyone.

[shadowkat]

Why do people care where you live? I talked to a guy today who commutes from Conway, NJ, just outside of Great Adventure - which is an hour drive from the city and an hour by bus. I used to commute to Jamaica, Queens - an hour and a 1/2 commute. There are people commuting to the city from Connecticut, Upstate NY (and I mean UP state), way out in Long Island (two-three hours), and from Pennsylvania.

Who are these nutty employers?

[conuly]

I know!

[ionelv]

I think that on an another level, (mostly) subconsciously, non-Staten Island New Yorkers are aware that Staten Island is very different: it is the only NY borough not connected to the others by subway. That is a big difference commuting wise and job-wise IMO. A free frequent ferry does not bridge that gap no matter how hard Staten Islanders wish it.

[conuly]

Yeah, but - and this is crucial - it doesn't really make us so far away that we can't commute places.

[dejla]

Hello from Bay Ridge!

I was forcibly retired in January, so I had to give up my car, which is hell for a Michigan girl, but I couldn't afford the insurance and the parking spot and the upkeep. Gave me back about $400 a month.

But I'm limited to buses - I can't do stairs. Knees and lungs won't take it. But I'd rather live in Brooklyn than Manhattan.

[conuly]

Cars are so expensive in NYC.