D.C.-area rail commuters have to deal with a lot as they travel to and from work -- long delays, hot rail cars, doors opening on the wrong sides, and now ... feces.
A Metro rider told the Washington Examiner that he found human feces smeared on a pedestrian bridge to the Franconia-Springfield station on Monday, and that despite telling Metro employees about the issue, it wasn't cleaned up until Wednesday.
According to the Examiner, the commuter, Austin Lasseter, said a Metro station manager told him it wasn't Metro's problem because the stairs belong to VRE -- even though it was on the Metro side of the bridge.
"Everyone walks past it on their way into the station, and it stinks," Lasseter told the Examiner. "The station manager's attitude is a perfect example of what's wrong with Metro. They just don't care about anything, even crap in their stations."
Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said he's not sure what may have been said between customers and Metro employees at the station. He said his office was first alerted to the problem by a customer via an online form at 11:20 a.m. Wednesday. Metro crews cleaned up the mess soon after.
Stessel said that customers who are not satisfied with the front-line response they get from Metro employees should call or use the online form to make the main offices aware of situations.
"There are more than 11,000 Metro employees," he said. "Most are good. Some are truly phenomenal. And some don't always respond the way we'd like them to."
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Stessel said Metro is following up with the station manager to ensure that proper procedures are being followed.
VRE told the Examiner that it doesn't have employees manning each of its station, so it doesn't know about some problems immediately.
To make matters worse, the Examiner reported that human feces was also found at VRE's Alexandria station on Wednesday.
