The story of stuff

T'is that time of year where many of us recieve gifts from colleagues and clients.

GO trains were never designed to accomodate bags and laggage so many passengers have to be creative with how they transport stuff. Many just blatantly bag-ride, cramming their Christmas baskets and gift bags onto an empty seat - at rush hour - only to have to remove everything when the train fills and that seat is the only seat left. This happened yesterday.

The lady across from me in the fourth car from the front, on the 5:10, had two gift baskets (one was the size of a two year old) and three large gift bags. She carefully and meticously arranged everything on the seat next to her.

This woman was not a day-tripper. She's a regular because I recognized her. I also got to hear all about her last day at work because she immediately hopped onto her Blackberry once she was done arranging her stuff. Apparently her staff were "extra generous" this year and she was looking forward to her holidays. Then she went on to describe everyting she got ... right down to the last bag of chocolate-covered peanuts in one of her gift baskets.

As people passed us to find places to sit, and one man squeezed himself into the window-seat next to me, it actually looked like she was going to get away with her holiday bag-ride. But no, a lady climbed upstairs at 5:09 and zeroed in on the seat, laden with gifts.

She made her way over and stood right beside the seat and looked at me. I looked back and then went back to my book. It ain't my shit, lady, I thought.

"Excuse me", she says to me to all icy and pissy. "Would you mind moving your stuff?" The owner of this stuff was still yapping into her Blackberry, oblivious to the Mexican stand-off. I put my book down and said, "It's not mine". "It's her's", and I pointed at the lady.

The woman caught my eye and I pointed at her stuff. She said to the person she was talking to, "I have to let you go, someone wants to sit beside me and I have to move my stuff". This wasn't said with a smile by the way.

She looks at the woman waiting and says she needs a minute to find a place for all her gifts. Then she stands up and puts a basket under her seat, a basket under the empty seat and puts all of the gift bags and her purse on her lap. She also made sure to blow out exxagerated breaths so as to insinuate how inconvenienced the lady wanting to sit was making her.

Halfway through the ride, she lost a bag containing a bottle of white wine. It fell and cracked and white wine flooded the floor below us. Now she had a broken bottle to contend with.

This was getting ridiculous. Finally I asked her if she wanted me to hold one of her other two bags.

She also kept checking the one gift basket that was under the other lady's seat which actually got wet from the wine. Why she kept checking it beseeches me. Did she think someone was pilfering her chocolate-covered peanuts?

The woman who asked for the seat got up at Pickering which resulted in the Stuff Lady losing her cool and mumbling to me that "if this woman was riding only to Pickering she could have at least stood!!!"

I said, not to be rude, but did you really have to bring this all home today? Surely some of it could have stayed at the office.

This woman, and I swear this is true, said she thought about it but with Christmas in three days, she can at least re-gift some of the stuff.

What's the moral of this story? I'll tell you. Some bosses don't appreciate the effort and money you spent to buy them a gift because they don't plan on keeping it, apparently.

I wanted to punt her bag I was holding across the aisle. Unreal.