TORONTO – As a means to deter young loiterers, TTC officials have begun playing a classical music compilation over the Dundas subway station intercom, which in turn has attracted groups of elderlies.
“This was supposed to be a genius solution to our loiterer problem. But it ended up creating a new one,” said TTC official, Joanne Burnaby. “At first it was quite sweet seeing the elderly come and socialize with each other at the station. They would hum along and tap their toes to the classical music and generally co-exist pretty harmlessly.”
“Unless you’re the type of person that the sight of old people reminds you of your mortality,” added the official.
“But now that’s all changed” continued Burnaby. “Just yesterday an older gentleman came up to me and asked if I would ‘join him for this dance’!” The official went on to add, “These old loiterers throw their Werther’s Originals wrappers all over the floor, force people to look at pictures of their grandkids, and fall asleep on the benches. It’s bad enough when people fall asleep on the subway but have you seen someone with sleep apnea fall asleep on the subway?”
“I’m always on high alert when I’m alone on the platform,” said 22-year-old engineering student Ali Amiri. “I wear my headphones with the volume down so I can still hear the station announcements, but if they try to tell me a story from back in the day I pretend I can’t hear them.”
“I was called a ‘Raggamuffin’ the other day,” Amiri added, “and I still don’t know if that’s racist or not.”
“Eventually we needed to stop the elderly from showing up, but we also need to keep our original loiterers away,” said the curator of the playlist, Nathaniel Dett. “So we stopped playing accessible compositions from people like Mozart, and began broadcasting music from Rachmaninoff and Holst – but that just made them rowdier!”
As a solution to the loitering problem, TTC has decided to play Radiohead over the Dundas station intercom, thus summoning hordes of their disappointing Gen X sons.
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