SubwayGuy

Wait until, if you're interested, you pick C Division and get miscellaneous qualified. Knuckle coupler adapters (MCB) are MUCH heavier than the Ohio Brass to H2C ones.

It will ask for both. For large companies you can just put any general company phone number if your immediate supervisor is no longer there or you don't know his/her number.

A new hiring plan will be created based on the future needs of the service, and schoolcar will set targets accordingly and forward to HR.

Keep the race and neighborhood townie type discussions off this. Every borough has its good and bad areas. The problems are the ghettos where you got a bunch of idiot welfare kids running around trying to be the next 50 cent with no education (note: i said no education, not no schooling), and a bunch of lazy deadbeat dads and single moms who think it's the school's and the government's responsibility to teach their kids how to be responsible, stay out of trouble, and have common sense. They are the biggest problem facing the city today, and they will grow up to be nothing other than the useless mumbling drags on the systems that you see pushing a pushcart with a squeaky wheel and a garbage bag, drooling all over themselves in the clothes they haven't washed in a week which don't fit quite right - chronic drug users in and out of court systems, future homeless in and out of shelters, and future dependents sucking on the tit of society trying to retain their apartment in the projects with their 7 tax deduc...erm, kids, all of which had to repeat the kindergarten 3 times. Note I am not talking about ALL, just SOME. It's a straw man, and a damn good one because everyone who's been in the city more than 5 minutes knows exactly who and what I am talking about. These people in their adult, and kid forms, cause most of the problems in the NYC Subway - fights, injuries/deaths from stupid behavior/dares, drunk/disorderly, false complaints cuz they want lawsuit money, etc. But they are not specific to one borough or another. They are in every borough in both divisions.

B Div could potentially be worse. Main Street on the 7 is 30-35 minutes to Manhattan and any IRT mainline, which is comparable to the travel time to take the F or E into Manhattan from Jamaica. Once you're in Manhattan, 42nd Street is pretty central to most lines, so getting to terminals is not bad. From TSQ, the 1 at 242nd is 35 minutes, give or take. The 2 at 241st is about 50 minutes, give or take. The 3 at 148th is about 20 minutes, give or take. From GCT, the 4 at Woodlawn is 35 minutes, give or take. The 5 at Dyre is about 40 minutes, give or take. The 6 at Pelham is about 40 minutes, give or take (if local)...less if express. Basically you're looking at an hour to 1 1/2 hr commute each way. In B Div, you might get some easy reports in Jamaica, but remember you can also be sent to Coney Island, Rockaway, Bedford Park Boulevard, Canarsie, 207th St., etc. Some of those are just as far if not further. Each division has its ups and downs.

No one's trying to initimidate you. Employees are posting this info so that those who are new to transit will not go in expecting it to be easy, and that they will have their hands held. After schoolcar, that's it. Once you are qualified on something, you are expected to be able to do it. You've got to know and do your job correctly down here, and if you can't, a paper trail will start to grow in your file, which is never a good thing. This is not like those white collar jobs that give you a year to prove yourself and a bunch of positive hippy friendship meetings where you are "constructively criticized" so as not to wound your fragile ego. It's a safety sensitive title, and new people need to be ready for what awaits - hence the posts. You can't skate through schoolcar, much less the job, based on casual knowledge of the subway as a rider. If you can hack it, it's not just a job, but a rewarding CAREER with good benefits and a pension that's pretty good. You'll never have to worry about your check bouncing or your employer going out of business, and you can go as far in MTA as you want, make a lot of money, and do quite well for yourself. But if you can't hack it, no amount of group therapy, positivity, and hugs is going to change that. So why sugarcoat it?

As soon as you start, you are a union member. However during probation you are not entitled to a hearing before dismissal - it can occur without union representation That's as I understnad it.

10/22 is the day the class is scheduled to start.

When you reinstate, you go to your old position on the list, which means you'll be called as soon as the next batch is invited down. You should be glad for that because if you were to wind up at the bottom of the list you would NEVER get called as Transit almost never gets past the first 3500 eligibles (out of more than 10,000 typically) before the list expires, is thrown out, and a new list from a later test is started. It varies. There's no right answer to this.

Yes, you start with zero your first year. You accrue 1 sick day per month for the first year. For transit holidays (New Year's, MLK, President's Day, Lincoln's Bday, Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day, Veterans Day, Thanksiving, Christmas, and once you're off probation - your birthday), you can elect to receive 8 additional hours pay OR save a holiday as an AVA (additional vacation allowance) day. AVA's must be requested 20 days in advance and may not be granted, and you can only save up to 8 (I believe) of them. Personally I've never had that many, I use them as I go. However one good thing about being extra extra is that you will get overtime which you can either elect to be paid for or given as OTO (overtime offset). You can save up to 72 hours in OTO, and it's treated exactly like an AVA when requested except it comes out of a different bank. Downside - while AVA's carry over from year to year, OTO doesn't. If you don't use it all up by the end of the year, you lose it (you do get paid for unused OTO though, but you lose the unused balance in your bank for requesting days off every year). Vacation is picked every year, just like jobs. During your first year, you will accrue 1 day vacation for each month towards the vacation pick (you must be on payroll at least 15 days during the month for it to count - hence why schoolcar classes usually start at the end of the month) which you can pick in the fall for the following year. If you have less than a week accrued for the following year, you will have 0 vacation WEEKS, and must pick individual days "vacation in days"...then you can try to rely on AVA's/OTO to fill in the blanks if you hope to have a full week off. If you have more than a week vacation to pick, but less than 2, you will pick one week vacation, and the balance in days. You can also opt to pick entirely in days. With 2 or more weeks vacation, you can pick ## weeks, or you can opt to pick one or more of those weeks in days. The procedure will be explained to you once you start if you're interested, but it is an option, and one of the best ways to guarantee days off in advance for things you know what day they will be. You will not be granted vacation just because you want it, it must be picked, and if a week or day is maxed out when it's your turn to pick, you've got to pick something different. Don't expect any vacation in the summer for many years, and good luck getting holidays off. But hey works for me, I like taking mine in the winter. The picks don't get really good until you've got a lot of time, but you can pick something you like and work on getting better jobs fairly early on - you'll just have to spend more time on the train than your senior coworkers, have a shorter lunch, have midweek days off, and the hours won't be as great (unless you actually LIKE the PM's). Picking is definitely nice though because you have control over your assignments (though the last to pick barely have any, and the very last one to pick has no choice, but I digress). Being on the board is not boring if you plan ahead. Learn the facilities and their capabilities. Some places have better amenities than others. Also you can bring your own distractions to work and use them while on board, just don't get caught using them on the train or platform (aka in front of people) and you'll never have a problem down here.

Extra extra life means this: -You will learn your days off (RDO's) for the following week (Sunday through Saturday) on FRIDAY. You will also learn your tour (AM's - all jobs that week start between 4AM and 1159AM, PM's - all jobs that week start between 12PM and 959PM, or MIDNITE's - all jobs that week start between 10PM the night before and 359AM). -You will learn your specific assignments (reporting time and reporting location) 2 days in advance, as well as a job, if you have been assigned one. Any reporting time that falls within your TOUR for the week is fair game, as is any reporting location in your division (A or B) -If you have not been assigned a job, you are given a reporting time and location to be "on the board" aka available. If you are on the board, you may sit for 8 hours and do nothing. However, at any time during those 8 hours, you can be sent anywhere within your division (A or B) to pick up a job, which does not have to belong to your tour, but must start during your 8 hours. You can also be asked to do a trip (ie not work a whole job, just work part of one), deliver mail, etc. When you report on board, you will not know what time you can reasonably expect to go home, nor will you know where you will be when you finish. -You will, as a result, often get short turnarounds between jobs. You are entitled to 12 hours off minimum when extra extra (not the usual 8), and the crew office often likes to push you to do less many times. You have the right of refusal if there are less than 12 hours between jobs, however, even with 12 hours off between jobs, that does not count your travel time to go home. -You can be assigned non-road jobs like platforms. Train operators can be assigned to switching in the yards or in stations. -Your days off and tour can change from week to week. You will have no prior warning when this occurs...you will find out on the Friday the week before. This means if you are sent midnights, you will know slightly more than 1 day in advance, and you will also find out your reporting times and locations and job info about 24-36 hours in advance, instead of 2 days because this "is" 2 days technically. -Your days off can be split (you get Sunday, and then the following Saturday). Also it's possible to work up to 10 consecutive days (they are not supposed to do this to people, but it could happen...needs of the service). -You can lose a day off due to a tour change. If you are working a PM job on Friday night, say from 3PM to 11PM, have Saturday off, but find out you are midnights and have to come in at 10PM Saturday night for your Sunday job....is Saturday really a day off? -Since you don't have enough days at a given location, you won't get a locker. You have to carry all your equipment to and from work every single day. You will also have to prove yourself at every location to which you report as you won't be familiar with local supervision, and just as you start to, the supervisor's preference pick will go into effect and that will all change (their picks don't line up with ours). -All of this makes planning things that require advance notice very hard - doctors and dentist appointments, family visits, significant other, looking for an apartment, friends/social life, travel on days off, etc. -This will continue until you have enough seniority to pick a job.

Except it's a short station. If a train operator is used to coming into a station and having 10 car lengths to stop, they will be rather surprised if they are not paying full attention and happen to realize the platform is only 5 cars long when they are already 3 cars into the station, instead of sooner.

As always. However this credible source did also offer up the caveat that given current schoolcar staffing levels that's an estimate of the needs of the service which is unlikely to be able to be met. Therefore the end impact will be less, and there will be more overtime available (since it takes a while to fully train a T/O of course and the schoolcar staffing shortage), and therefore a few more of the old timers might hang on a bit longer in the process, bringing the need down a bit to a point where everything remains manageable. But there WILL be a lot going out, so the pace should be pretty steady once things get rolling. There does seem to be some sort of administrative delay when starting hiring off a new list so this is nothing to be alarmed about at present. Letters should be going out pretty soon if they haven't already (possibly even some arriving this week?)

Well once this list starts things should move quickly - I've been told they want to hire something insane like almost 300 by end of spring next year...of course whether or not that's possible is entirely a different story but a LOT of people are projecting to go out in the next few months and years.

They weren't verified. Based on a review of your package, your application met the requirements. When you're called, you'll have to substantiate your claims.

Since terminology is important, I just want to clarify for you in addition to the above posts...throttles are for diesels. The device you are referring to is the "master controller" or "controller" for short. You are asking specifically about the "deadman's device" "deadman's switch" or, most accurately, "deadman's feature" of the master controller. Which TwoTimer's post above describes quite well in its operation.

Yes, and that's the only way. It actually recently caused an issue when a T/O did this as desired, reached up outside the window to punch for a lineup, and this individual's girth nudged the controller out of full service for a CHOW.

It does not mean anything about hiring rates or prospects. All it means is that someone from DCAS reviewed your application packet, and assuming you told the truth, you meet the experience and education requirements to be called, and possibly appointed to work for Transit. Transit still has to exhaust the promotionals. You still have to take a drug test, and pass. You still have to take a medical, and pass. You still have to make all your appointments with TA and do all your paperwork. You can still be terminated during probation if something comes up on you later, such as if you made up all your work experience.

Yes. It will just be a wait is all. Maybe 18 months to 2 years.

It can be used on both, but must be with some legitimate reason. Read that thread for more detail on what the rule entails and how it works.

OA cannot promote to TA with civil service tests as TA falls under civil service law, while OA follows some of the same practices, but is not required to follow civil service law. Here is the excerpt from the NOE for the last promotional conductor exam to prove my point:

SubwayGuy's Top 10 (Rules - food must be of enough quantity to be a meal and must be ready in under 5 minutes...also the chain must be national): 10-White Castle 9-KFC 8-Popeye's 7-Boston Market 6-Burger King 5-Wendy's 4-McDonald's 3-Taco Bell 2-Five Guys Burgers 'N Fries And the winner is... 1-Chipotle