Powell, on the night shift, had to ask a coworker for a ride home. As they were preparing to leave, they ran into a colleague who was arriving by cab from Philadelphia.
"She said it cost her $75. It's not fair. I only make $105 a shift. That's taking food off my table," Powell said.
Walter Gordon tried to adjust to the walkout by catching the last bus to his Bucks County building-maintenance job. Instead, he found himself staring at idle buses at 3 a.m. at the Frankford Transportation Center, and worrying that his job "is going to go down the tubes."
"What about us little guys who barely, barely make it?" asked Gordon, 45, who said he was unsure how he was going to get back to his South Philadelphia home.
At the end of the workday, the pattern was much the same.
At 5:30 p.m., Mimi Waites had already been stuck for more than an hour at the 69th Street Terminal, waiting for a ride home from a friend of her brother's.
Waites, 21, is studying to be a licensed practical nurse at Pennsylvania Institute of Technology in Media. But after school yesterday, she got back as far as Upper Darby, and no farther, because of the city's idled transit workers.
"I can't help it that I can't afford a car," said Waites, who lives near 59th Street and Lansdowne Avenue. "We pay taxes, and we use this transportation. It's just been a real hectic day."
The impact was uneven at suburban businesses.
At the vast King of Prussia mall, all 400 stores managed to open on time even though up to a quarter of the mall's 6,000 employees use public transportation to get to work, said general manager Bob Hart. Many were apparently able to make do with the Regional Rail and suburban trolley lines that are still operating, he said.
"It's going to take employees and customers longer to get to the mall, but it can still happen," said Hart, who said he did not know how many workers start their days in Philadelphia.
