“There was one woman carrying a long pipe vertically and resting it on her foot,” Mr. Brown said. When the pipe struck the ceiling, it drove down onto her foot with such force it also caved in an escalator step, putting the escalator out of commission for a week. It was unclear what happened to the woman’s foot.

Around noon, Mr. Brown stepped into his office to resolve some “nonconformities.”

Mr. Brown was an Army man for over a decade, and the military is famed for its layers and mazes of bureaucracy, but nothing in his experience compares with the amount of virtual paperwork involved in managing a subway station.

Every physical defect discovered across the 827,000 square feet under his domain, from a burned-out bulb to a broken-down elevator, is known as a nonconformity and entered into the enterprise asset management system — E.A.M. for short — where it is assigned to the appropriate division or divisions for repair and tracked through its eventual resolution.

Customer complaints, of which there are many, are tracked in a different system, C.R.M. (customer relationship management). Then there are the unusual occurrences, or U.O.’s. Like the military, the M.T.A. is fond of abbreviations and acronyms.

Mr. Brown’s office is on the mezzanine level, behind one of those scuffed off-white doors found throughout the subway system that bear cryptic inscriptions like “Access to Condulets” or “General Orders and Diversions.”

His just says “Station Dept.,” with a phone number, and “CAUTION Watch for opening door.”