They should make these with wires.
Subway riders have droppe🦩d ✃so many Apple AirPods on the tracks recently that the MTA is considering a new public-service announcement warning commuters not to remove pricey earwear while boarding or exiting trains.
“They are more valuable to [commuters] than their lives,” one subway cleaner toജld the Post about the $159 Bluetooth ear✱buds.
“Just last week I had to stop a man from going down [to] the tracks to get it. I told him to go upstairs to the booth andꦡ make a report.”
The fallen-AirPod epidemi⭕c began in March♛ when Apple released a new version, according to internal MTA data.
Between March andඣ mid-July, subway workers armed with eight-foot “grabbers” retrieved 84 AirPods — nearly 20 per month — and hun♏dreds more items listed as “earbuds,” “earpods” or “headphones,” officials said.
“It happens all the time,” said a maintena✃nce worker, who told The Post he fell onto the tracks in early August while trying to retrieve a woman’s AirPod.
“That thing is not even as big as my pinky finger,” he said, recalling that he held the tiny earpiece up after being pulled from the tracks and said, “For this?”
“I took a few▨ days o🍸ff. My supervisor told me never to do it again.”
An𒈔other worker said he once had to stop a woman from climbing down onto the track to recoup h🐽er headphone.
“I told her you can’t go down there, you have to wait for help,” he said. “She waited about an hour un𝐆til someone came to get it.”
“[People] don’t 🏅realize how deep it is down there,” he added. “And it’s not🦄 that easy to come back up.”
Some folks have come up with✱ creative ways to recovꦐer their fallen pods.
One woman named Ashley Maye🍰r, w𒀰ent viral in July when she live-tweeted her journey to save her AirPod from the tracks using a contraption she fashioned out of a broom and duct tape.
She then polled her followers about putting it back in hꦬer ear. A little more than half gave her the OK.
Bu🅺t riders trying to retrieve the devices are causing delays, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reported on ꦆthe MTA’s potential PSA.
Nearly 2 percent of train delays in June were passenger-related, including for retrieval of property, such ♋as AirPods, from tracks, according to the most recent available MTA data.
New York City Transit boss Andy Byford💯 addressed the AirPod scourge on Tuesday, calling it “a mod💜ern phenomenon.”
“Occasionally people do say ‘can you go and retrieve my AirPods?’ but we are not going to stop the train service for that but we certainly don’🅷t want people jumping down onto the train tracks to go and get AirPods,” Byf🎃ord said.