People at Work®: Mr Anger Management.

As regular Gentle Viewers know, I like taking photos of People at Work®, trains and using a TtV contraption. All of these led me to Northern Maine Junction where I've been hundreds of times. So today I stop into the little brick station house and ask if I can take some photos and the guy says Ok, but be careful because they are switching trains.

Ok, I'll grant that maybe I was where they would have preferred me not to be, but what I encountered when I ran into Porky Train Switch Dude was nothing like I'd ever encountered before. He comes screaming at me! Some choice quotes "I don't care WHO told you that you could be here! Get your goddamned ass out of here! You are trespassing and I'll call the goddamned cops." Ok, that within his scope of practice maybe but it sounds like the raving of a madman given that I didn't even try to explain about seeing the other guy first. So I left. No big deal.

What earned him THIS post was the raving lunatic was STILL SCREAMING as he was walking back to the train and I was walking away. Choice quotes: "You goddamned people are all alike!" (Middle aged camera wielding photoblogging speech pathologists ARE a rather homogenous bunch) and "How would you like it if people took photos of YOU at work?"

Let's enumerate some reasons I might not like it:

1. If I were wanted by the police for violating my probation or already listed in some State database complete with a photo which brought me scorn from the community. (I'm sure this isn't the case with Mr Anger Management)

2. If I were violating some OSHA safety rule like hiding beer in a box car or doing my job incorrectly. (Again, a hypothetical which doesn't apply to Mr Anger Management)

3. If I hated my job so much that I didn't even want to be seen doing it. (But not Mr Anger Management who seemed to love hooking up boxcars and the snazzy safety vest.)

4. I had screwed up my personal/financial life so badly that it overflowed into every other aspect of my life and made me scream like a little girl at strangers committing perceived acts of grave injustice against me. (I have no idea if this applies to Mr Anger Management or not, we didn't have much time for deep chit chat)

Other than that I'm ok with it, Ringo, so get your camera.

I've always reached an amicable agreement to not photograph the homeless, inmates, drunks, felons, cops, and kids; I've photographed at train wrecks, fires, airports, ambulance calls, rescues, oil tank farms and other places I shouldn't have been and just left or stopped photographing when asked. Anyone I've ever encountered who acted like that had either been drinking, on drugs, or just plain crazy and even then I could always talk them down.

Never once have I elicited the reaction I got today. So I dunno what his deal was. Maybe his wife/girlfriend/domestic partner is mad he had to work. Maybe he drew the short straw and HE normally got to sit in the cool brick building. Maybe Mr Anger Management was the President of Guilford Industries just covering for the guys who normally hook up the trains.

I went back to the little Station House to apologize to the cool guy who first let me in there and said I hoped I hadn't gotten him into any trouble. He just sort of chuckled and said the other guy was '"just concerned that I was out there."

No kidding.