Community & Editorial
Tickets, please
Fear and loathing aboard mass transit
Ed. note: When the Link light rail line begins service July 18, Sound Transit will allow riders to board, then deploy a fare inspector to ask for a pass or ticket, handing out citations and fines to those who haven’t paid. According to this Salzburg ticket inspector, it’s an unenviable job.
I remember well my work as a ticket inspector on the city buses. This profession wasn’t an easy one, though. People say that this job is not very nice and downright unattractive. “If only you had learned a real profession,” they rant, or: “He does nothing but annoy other people”.
Although the ticket collector represents a person with some authority, it is not easy for him. Some passengers feel jimjams in their stomach when he boards the bus. The ticket inspector benefits from this to uphold his image, and with a serious face, directed to the crowd, he says: Tickets, please!
Passengers observe and distrust him constantly. When he does something wrong, it will be in the newspaper the next morning: “Ticket inspector tantalizes innocent student.” Even “sexual harassment” comes up from time to time.
At the same time, he is only a small man in the functioning of his security company. He merely carries out what his superiors require him to do. Bad days however, do happen every once in a while. On these days, he has to duck away. He makes himself scarce, to say it in a popular way.
When the insults he faces become too rough, he thinks by himself of another bus connection — as far away as possible — and rapidly changes direction. This makes him smile sometimes, when he realizes how fast he is able to beam himself around, true to the proverb: “Devil may care.”
But this is secondary. The worst that can happen is when he has caught a fare dodger and suddenly uninvolved passengers turn against him. In this case, like a dentist, he has to pull the bad tooth without hurting the others — the healthy ones. This often causes problems.
An inexperienced greenhorn in this trade is sometimes not completely aware and instead of holding the fare dodger responsible tries to argue with the other people, which only earns him the resentment of all the passengers. A poor guy he is, truly. Because afterwards — few people know this — he has to mentally readjust himself. He thus starts licking his wounds together with his colleagues. Often they take a short coffee break to assess the damage.
After serious assurance by colleagues that this was a very bad thing, they start laughing quickly and really experienced ticket inspectors make a small jamboree out of this. Then you go back to work.
If the ticket inspector could be surrounded by good spirited people who thank him for his activity, he would be able to exercise his authority with more verve. He would then see the satisfied faces of the passengers and relax inside, offering a smile here and some chatting there.
If he could work like this, he could be himself and see his work from a different angle: “The ticket inspector, your friendly helper.” If he catches a fare dodger, he will give him a tongue-lashing, but without losing his good mood. Really. In the best case, you let him go and are happy to have shown humaneness.
Yes, the ticket inspector has a hard time….
Comments
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