Worst commute ever? 50 children play the recorder for 40 minutes on the underground

The horror, the sheer unbridled horror.

You may think you have it bad squeezing onto the Victoria Line of a morning and dealing with the Avicii bleeding from a fellow commuter's iPod earphones, but it could be worse, you could live in Brooklyn, New York where scores of kids apparently ceaselessly play shrill recorder until someone tears off their own ears.

One unlucky passenger on the N train of the city's subway encountered the hellish orchestra at 9am on Tuesday morning, taking a quick smartphone video of it presumably to later show as evidence to their colleagues of why they were weeping at their desk for hours.

The children apparently played for a full forty minutes, both when the train was moving and stationary, performing not so much a specific set list of songs as just heinous free jazz.

"It was cute for like 5 minutes then the best/worst form of torture ever," a tipster told Gothamist.

Apparently there were two chaperones present, who clearly need to be immediately rounded up and tried at The Hague for crimes against humanity.