An absolute requirement in Japan if you are more than a few minutes late in Japan. A thirty minute delay during morning rush hour used to have train staff with a stack of papers handing them out to everyone going out of the gate kiosk. I used to get them after any delay at all on my commute.
I assume now annoying bosses can check online, but it's Japan so an old person in charge might ask for the paper slip as well just in case you overslept when you were in a nearby business hotel after a rather awful stint of over time the night before.
I imagine (I don't live in the Chicagoland area, so guessing here, perhaps someone from the 'burbs there can chime in) it's a note from the CTA saying the train was delayed so you can limit your negative exposure when you boss wants to know why you're two hours late.
Which is actually much more than NYC does. Although that has its advantages as well. The linked fortune[0] (actually an excerpt from a NYT 'Metropolitan Diary'[1] piece ca. 1980) details this:
I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the accompanying
promises that this would in no way improve service. For the transit system,
as it now operates, has hidden advantages that can't be measured in monetary
terms.
Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have that
unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by subway."
Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should someday show up
and mumble them, any audience would instantly understand his long delay.
I shudder to imagine the working relationship where that’s relevant.
But I very much appreciate the advantages you point out. I felt a little sense of loss when, on work in that city, I noticed that some degree of cellular service had reached the stations…
CTA never did that; I don’t think they could if the wanted to.
Metra did it, I’m 99.9% sure they stopped years ago. But yeah, there would be a person at the platform when the train arrived downtown with a piece of paper saying that the train was delayed. A late slip.
Nowadays, you have real-time location tracking of the train. If it’s late, you can tell your employer what train you’re on and they could verify it. At least to a better degree than with the late slips. Still not perfect. But if you’ve got an employer that would want to verify such things, you’ve got worse problems.
Larrikin|11 months ago
I assume now annoying bosses can check online, but it's Japan so an old person in charge might ask for the paper slip as well just in case you overslept when you were in a nearby business hotel after a rather awful stint of over time the night before.
nobody9999|11 months ago
I imagine (I don't live in the Chicagoland area, so guessing here, perhaps someone from the 'burbs there can chime in) it's a note from the CTA saying the train was delayed so you can limit your negative exposure when you boss wants to know why you're two hours late.
Which is actually much more than NYC does. Although that has its advantages as well. The linked fortune[0] (actually an excerpt from a NYT 'Metropolitan Diary'[1] piece ca. 1980) details this:
[0] https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes/to...[1] https://www.nytimes.com/column/metropolitan-diary
alwa|11 months ago
I shudder to imagine the working relationship where that’s relevant.
But I very much appreciate the advantages you point out. I felt a little sense of loss when, on work in that city, I noticed that some degree of cellular service had reached the stations…
Kon-Peki|11 months ago
Metra did it, I’m 99.9% sure they stopped years ago. But yeah, there would be a person at the platform when the train arrived downtown with a piece of paper saying that the train was delayed. A late slip.
Nowadays, you have real-time location tracking of the train. If it’s late, you can tell your employer what train you’re on and they could verify it. At least to a better degree than with the late slips. Still not perfect. But if you’ve got an employer that would want to verify such things, you’ve got worse problems.