There are a lot of gross, unsettling things we've seen on the subway (Google "Gothamist subway condom" at your own risk), but it's rare that something is both gross AND a potential health hazard. But in an unnervingly smooth campaign of terror, someone has apparently been spreading peanut butter on subway poles on the A train.

Nia Meadows, 19, was riding the A train from Harlem to Canal Street to go to jury duty this morning around 8:30 a.m. when she encountered the creamy pole. "I put my hand on the pole—I was using my phone absentmindedly, so I wasn't looking around—and I touched something that did not feel like the pole," she told Gothamist. "And I looked up and saw some sort of brown substance on it and on my hand." She sniffed her hand to confirm it was indeed peanut butter, and got worried—because she actually has a nut allergy.

Well someone smeared peanut butter all over a #mta pole and I accidentally put my hand on it and I can’t do anything about it because I have jury duty in 10 minutes so I guess it was nice knowing you all pic.twitter.com/nb4aJZpMkF — nia (@_nmeadows) January 28, 2020

"I probably should have been more panicked, but I really didn't have a response," she said. "I thought, 'I guess I'll just use my EpiPen if I need to.' It was kinda funny, sitting there staring at my hand thinking, 'This would be a really dumb way to go.'" People near her on the train avoided the substance while making snide remarks: "There was a collective disgruntlement. People were not thrilled. It was a very NYC moment."

She ended up going the rest of her commute with the peanut butter all over her hand. "It looked so nasty, and I didn't want to wipe it off on anything in case it wasn't peanut butter, but I also didn't want to spread it—what if someone else with a peanut allergy touched it?" she added. "That was the worst part of it. I thought about asking people around me for Purell, but I didn't want to make a public announcement."



Thankfully, she didn't have an adverse reaction, and wiped the peanut butter off when she got to jury duty.

It turns out that this wasn't the first time in the last week that peanut butter was spotted on the train: Katherine Sullivan, who works at WNYC, also had a nutty encounter when she rode the A train to work around 9 a.m. on January 16th. "There was peanut butter smeared all over the bars on one end of an uptown A train," she said, noting that the train was so crowded "no one could move and it got all over everyone's coats."

"It’s kind of hard to see it on the hand rails, so a lot of people (me included) put their hands in it without realizing," she added. "It’s pretty bad! If someone had an allergy they’d be in big trouble." Someone else who was on the train tweeted this as well:

Really love to see New Yorkers looking out for each other, like this morning on my train, when there was peanut butter all over the door and at every stop folks warned new passengers about the peanut butter all over the door — Samantha Stokes (@stokessamanthaj) January 16, 2020

Then one day later, Business Insider editor Mark Abadi also encountered the sticky stuff during the morning rush hour commute. "I would describe [people's reactions] as a mixture of annoyance, confusion, and 'it's too early to deal with this shit'-style ambivalence," he told Gothamist.

"The train felt slightly more crowded than usual because people had to cram to avoid touching the peanut butter," he said. "During my ride, one unfortunate passenger did walk on the train and grab the upper handrail without looking (and before anyone had time to warn her) — she seemed a little confused and grossed out. Luckily she had a napkin on her to wipe it off."

To the person who spread peanut butter all over the hand rails on the A train: why? pic.twitter.com/3dFGcqkeRL — Mark Abadi (@mark_abadi) January 17, 2020

An MTA spokesperson said they are "looking into" the incidents. If you've had a brush with the peanut butter—or have seen the person who put it there, a.k.a. "the lamest superhero villain of all time"—let us know at tips@gothamist.com.