Haley Dragoo Is on the Fast Train
The opening line of the LinkedIn profile for Haley Dragoo ’13 (CLAS) reads, “From unemployed to a feature in the NYT and a "60 Minutes" appearance in less than a year... wildly lucky.” Dragoo is a social media manager for New York City’s public transportation system MTA, the Metropolitan Transit Authority. She was indeed the subject of a July profile in The New York Times, titled “Don’t Hate Her. She’s Just the (Subway) Messenger.” She also was featured in an October “60 Minutes” segment about the inner workings of NYC’s subway system.
Dragoo at the 34th Street–Hudson Yards subway station in New York City. Getting her job with the MTA took her, she says, from her “last ten dollars to a profile in The New York Times.”
Peter Morenus
Haley Dragoo Is on the Fast Train
The opening line of the LinkedIn profile for Haley Dragoo ’13 (CLAS) reads, “From unemployed to a feature in the NYT and a "60 Minutes" appearance in less than a year... wildly lucky.” Dragoo is a social media manager for New York City’s public transportation system MTA, the Metropolitan Transit Authority. She was indeed the subject of a July profile in The New York Times, titled “Don’t Hate Her. She’s Just the (Subway) Messenger.” She also was featured in an October “60 Minutes” segment about the inner workings of NYC’s subway system.
Dragoo at the 34th Street–Hudson Yards subway station in New York City. Getting her job with the MTA took her, she says, from her “last ten dollars to a profile in The New York Times.”
Peter Morenus
“People can get really frustrated when they’re having difficulties with their commute, and we just try and be as empathetic and accurate with our answers as possible,” says Dragoo, explaining her job helping run all manner of social media for the subway system.
Dragoo grew up in Montville in the southeastern part of Connecticut and says she chose UConn for financial reasons, having originally wanted to attend Emerson to study public relations. “Ooooh, I’ll be in Boston,” she says in a mimic of her high school self.
“But that was just a 17-year-old kid not understanding the concept of how much $160,000 actually is. My mom said, ‘You’re going to UConn.’”
Fortunately, she says, she took that advice and started her UConn studies as a communication sciences major. Dragoo switched to an individualized major in consumer behavior during her sophomore year, finishing up with a senior capstone thesis that analyzed the consumer impact of Google.
“I don’t know that I would have graduated on time if I hadn’t found the individualized major program. It was a life raft,” she says. “It was a diamond, a secret gem. All the advisors were amazing; they paid so much attention to me. Every time I go into an interview, people ask about that. It makes you stand out.”
She also was featured in a “60 Minutes” segment about the inner workings of NYC’s subway system.
Off Track
Still, before earning a glowing profile in the Times, Dragoo’s career path had been a bit rocky.
Her first job after graduation was at a Connecticut casino, as a cage cashier exchanging gamblers’ chips for money.
“I worked there for six days!” she says laughing. “I just couldn’t deal with it. They made me take my nose ring out every day, you couldn’t paint your nails, they made me put makeup on my arm tattoos.”
Does MTA require anything similar? “I could have a tattoo,” she replies, “on my face.”
After stints doing social media for two companies in California, Dragoo returned to the Northeast to be closer to loved ones. She’s the only child of a single mother whom she was only seeing annually and was in a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend, Michel, whom she’s still with today.
But moving back without a job in hand was financially dire. “I would have to borrow money from my mom just to pay the tolls to drive to see Michel in New York City,” she remembers.
After submitting 133 job applications — yes, she still recalls the exact number — the MTA hired her in November 2017.
Dragoo wasn’t confident she would land the job, having applied from a position of unemployment.
“They have all these people whose lifelong goal had been to work for the MTA,” she says, “but that wasn’t me.”
On Course
With the official title Assistant Transit Customer Service Specialist, Dragoo posts more than 100 times per day through Twitter account @NYCTSubway, which has 962,000 followers as of this writing, as well as the MTA’s official website, Facebook page, and MYmta app. She posts status updates about delayed or stalled trains as well as in-the-moment replies to questions or complaints from individual passengers who message or tweet at the MTA.
That part of the job comes with a downside, admits Dragoo. Seeing thousands of mean tweets every time you come to work for years can take a big toll on your mental health.
“Your job for your entire shift is to absorb people’s unbridled blind anger,” she says. “You’re seeing the most personally hurtful things people can say, literally responding to people at their worst.”
Part of her job is simply understanding that. “They’re having the worst time of their day because their train isn’t coming,” says Dragoo. “They hate the MTA in that moment.” She’s giving them not just logistic information, she says. “We just hope that our answers give them some peace of mind.”
Another piece of the job is translating things into plain English. This, for instance, just came over the internal subway radio system known as the six wire: “Incident: BK-bound 4 train at Bowling Green discharging due to a door problem. BK-bound 4/5 trains holding in stations b/w Wall Street and 125 Street.”
“I posted: ‘Southbound 4 and 5 trains are holding in stations between 125 St and Wall St while we remove a train with mechanical problems from service at Bowling Green.’”
As cool as her position is right now, Dragoo says it still doesn’t beat the job she had working as an event manager at UConn’s Student Union. “That was the greatest job I’ve ever had.”
— JESSE RIFKIN ’14 (CLAS)
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