It's A Dunkin' Employee's Job To Open This New Jersey Train Station Every Morning
The Hamilton train station in New Jersey has an unusual setup: The doors are opened by the employees of the train station Dunkin' every morning. Cue a bazillion "This train station runs on Dunkin'" jokes. This policy was pointed out in a slightly exasperated tone to traveler Steve in this tweet from the New Jersey transit authority:
Hi Steve, like previously stated, Dunkin Donuts is responsible for opening the doors in the morning at Hamilton station. NJT has spoken to the vendor multiple times. If you would like to file a formal complaint, use the link below. -TB https://t.co/XKn7GOjKzM
— NJ TRANSIT (@NJTRANSIT) March 21, 2019
As Jeff Edelstein reports in a resulting editorial in The Trentonian, "To be clear, in case there's any confusion, and... you know what? There's no confusion. A Dunkin' Donuts employee is in charge of making sure the doors to the lobby of the train station get opened each morning." The company goes by Dunkin' now, but still: This seems like a lot of pressure to put on the "time to make the doughnuts" guy, who should be busy getting all of that vital coffee ready before the morning commute.
Unsurprisingly, this resulted in a flood of hilarious response tweets to NJTransit rep "TB":
NJTransit's TB tries to explain that this task was included in Dunkin's contract when they moved into the train station, but it still doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
"Hey Jerry, sorry you can't go to work today, the donut guy is hungover again."
— sdx1312 (@souldeux) March 21, 2019
Going to go out on a limb and predict that the NJT will soon assign an actual transit employee to open the train station doors from now on. Then again, given NJTransit's sterling reputation among Garden State commuters, maybe not.