Yes, It Is Possible To Get This Lost

You might be asking how lost one can get in Manhattan. It is pretty easy to get turned around, walk downtown instead of uptown, or hop on the wrong subway. We've all been there. Luckily with the Manhattan Grid, you can get yourself back on track. 

I get a lot of phone calls from friends asking "where am I?", "how do I get here?", etc. However, one phone call from a friend meeting me at my office after work was one I wasn't prepared for. 

I told my friend (the name I'll keep anonymous) to meet me at my office, located on 47th and 2nd. Not a terrible walk from Grand Central, only about 10 minutes. Now my friend is from Poughkeepsie, but has only been to the city a handful of times. She's familiar with the Metro-North, but only going home, not to Manhattan. I tell her she needs to be on Track 4 at the Fordham station and ready to take the 4:35. It would get her into Grand Central around 5 and she would walk the rest of the way to where I was. 

However, this could only go so smoothly with someone who is so unfamiliar with the city. I shared my location on my iPhone so she could get directions to my exact spot, making it easier on her. 

But no, I got a phone call that started with, "how do I get out of Grand Central, like how do I exit the building?" I was so thrown off by the question, but I did the best I could to talk her through it. Finally I just said, "find a door, walk out and text me what street you end up on." I couldn't verbally tell her how to exit the building and I was getting frustrated trying to do so. 

Eventually my friend found my office and we enjoyed the evening we had planned, but let me tell ya, I didn't know it would be that much of a struggle for her to get to me. From now on I meet her at a better location, but she proved to me it is possible to get that lost.