Idiot of the Day XV

Yep, that is someone's shoe partially consumed by the Metro Center escalator. Now, when I was a kid, my grandmother once chided me quite harshly in public because I was one of those kids who thought escalators were fun and should be played on all the time when parents are shopping for useless crap.

I've since become one of those people who loathe others who don't follow proper escalator etiquette (stand to the right, assholes, while us fleet-footed folks walk on the left), or get pissed when Metro thinks it's funny to shut down every escalator in a station and not tell anyone of the physically disabled sort (like when the elevators were broken in Farragut North once and this poor lady in a wheelchair was stuck on the platform until they got it working again). Or, when Metro gets even dumber and decides that if a escalator is broken they'll keep the ones going down functioning but the one going up unworking instead of making life a little easier for those going up (it's called gravity people, it'll carry you down the stairs).

Anyway, I don't know if the person on the other end of that shoe is a pile of mushy goo or just wandering aimlessly one-shoed, but the lesson, as always: fear and respect that escalator.