Here’s a hypothesis – those on the lower end of the real power totem pole have the power that comes from lack of consequences. What are you going to do, fire them? Prepare yourself for a wrongful termination lawsuit.

Ahhh, Stan, pure genius. And your daughter writes well too. Must be genetic.

Not to go on a socio-economic tirade here but people on the low end of the pay scale are getting like 8$ an hour at say McDonald’s. I don’t know about you but 8$ covers taking orders and giving out value meals but it does not cover putting up with bs from customers. I mean if you are paying me 8$ an hour with gas prices going through the roof (I am essentially paying Exxon in gas for the right to go to work at McD’s) then I am going to seek additional compensation in my job. Not monetary – that would be stealing – but I am going to enjoy the freedom of telling moronic customers about my views on life and how to live it.” In the winner take all society, the little people get to get a little pay back every now and again and we all love money. Right? Just a different currency,

Well Bing, life has those moments when you wish you could pull out your 45 and rid the planet of small tyrants.
However it all boils down to: Sometimes the most efficient way to do your job is to not do your job.

Life will always fall within 2 or 3 atandard deviation points of the mean on the old bell curve.

When it goes beyond that we have difficulty comprehending the path we should take; ie: kill someone or let it pass as a bad day

I agree that small power can corrupt – and it can be quite annoying when it happens to you … but in this instance, your daugther and her friend were breaking the rules

I was at a cubs-nationals game in the nationals new park, and I went to buy a hotdog and a coke at the concession stand. There were over a hundred hotdogs cooking on the rollers. However, the concession lady looked at them, and told me with a dead look in her eyes that they “weren’t ready yet”. So there I stood, for over ten minutes. A crescendo of yells rose behind me in line….and their fury was directed at me. “What kind of hotdog is he ordering anyways?” were the yells. This only slowed the concession ladyn down more. What a joke. I noticed that a lot of concession workers at Nationals Park have attitude like this, too. It’s like some of them resent the fact that we’re out enjoying a baseball game, paying 8 dollars for a hotdog. That one really ticked me off.

Tom is right on the money with his hypothesis!

I witnessed a similar Train Conductor Incident. Recently my boyfriend and I spent a pleasant evening in Philly and got on the train to go home later that night. Also on our train were a large number of college students headed back to their school from partying in the city. They were a little loud, but not really being rude or getting in anyone’s way.

One of SEPTA’s many problems is that you can only buy tickets anytime at 3 stations. Most ticket offices are only open in the early morning, some stations have no ticket offices at all, and SEPTA took out all the ticket vending machines two years ago and never replaced them — meaning that in many circumstances you are forced to buy a ticket on board the train and pay a markup for doing so. Did I mention SEPTA has problems? Anyway.

The older gentleman conductor comes through. The first two people he walks up to are college kids buying on board, and he tells them the price. Most of the rest of the passengers hear it and start digging in their pockets and purses for the same amount.

“OH LET ME GUESS, YOU’RE ALL BUYING ON BOARD, RIGHT?!” the conductor yells across the entire car. The kids giggle. It would have been funny if the conductor had stopped there, but he didn’t. “YOU KNOW, YOU COULD HAVE BOUGHT TICKETS IN ADVANCE! SAVE TIME, SAVE MONEY!” He goes up to the next few people, also buying on board, and yelled “And YOU could have saved money, and YOU could have saved money, and YOU could have saved money. But NO! YOU’RE BUYING ON BOARD. YOU’RE PAYING MORE MONEY.”

One kid says “There wasn’t any place open to buy tickets!”

“PLAN AHEAD!” the conductor yelled in her face. “PLAN AHEAD! Kids these days! Don’t care about saving a buck! Don’t care about planning ahead!”

Another says “Hey, look at it this way, SEPTA’s making more money, which means you’re making more money.”

“OHHH I’M NOT MAKING MORE MONEY! That’s what YOU think! Man, kids these days. DON’T CARE ABOUT SAVING MONEY! BUY AHEAD! SAVE TIME, SAVE MONEY!”

The refrain continued all the way through the car, and there was an audible sigh of relief when he walked into the next car. I guess he thought he was teaching the Durned Kids a valuable lesson about saving (in their case) $1.50 on a train ticket.

a $5 ought to take care of it on the low end of the bell curve

Reading just the beginning of the post I was reminded of a situation several years ago, where I came to the same conclusion you did.

My husband and I were at Hearst Castle near Cambria CA. This is a state park and they have tours of the “castle.” You decide which tour you want, pay for it, and go line up in the right line to wait for the bus to take you to the top of the hill where the castle is. The busses run every 10 to 15 minutes or so. The lines are set up like at Disneyland as it can get very crowded in the busy season. Not so crowded this day – the bus pulled up and the park ranger started loading passengers. I knew we would not make this bus based on the amount of people before us, no big deal, I can wait my turn. The ranger lets the inital group she counted out on and she must have counted wrong because the bus driver said he had three more seats. She turned to the about 15 people now waiting and you could just see the sense of power grow within her. She looked around and actually said to the next group – your too large a group – now let me see – who would like to go on this bus and who will have to wait until the next one. She proceeded walking around the group sizing up the various peple to see who was deserving.

I was trying so hard not to laugh out loud I had to turn my back to her. My immediate thought was “what a little power does to some people.” I just knew if shge saw me laughing she would make sure I never made it up the hill. She did pick a group of two from the middle of the line and was just daring the rest of us to complain.

At the time I felt sorry for her, what kind of life must she have that the only sense of control/power she has is in picking who goes next and who waits from a bunch of strangers.

This one is easily resolved. Close inspection of the photo included with Mr. Bing’s excellent article reveals that the conductor in question is clearly not a female at all. On my sharp new iMac monitor, a 5 o’clock shadow is readily apparent. This is not a conductress but a conductor! Surely receiving a couple of “yes ma’ams” will embitter most any guy. And don’t call me surely.

– sawyer
http://www.sawyerspeaks.wordpress.com

You daughter & her friend must not rides trains that much.

This is normal behaviour for a about 10% of conductors. I brek the rules knowingly all the time realizing that any time I could be called out on my bluff.

I’ve ridden trains often enough to have been called out more than once.

Your daughter got called out. As she looks less & less innocent she’ll get called out more and more. She’d best realize that and act more mature.

Reading the comments pertaining to the temperature at which urine freezes in Canada? I’m honored to be in an ongoing discussion with you all.

Boy do I have one! I am custodian for a mentally retarded adult. Last October, Social Security cut her check in half. No explanation, just a statement that she was overpaid. I called the 800 number and after 45 minutes, a clerk told me I had to go to the SSA office. (You can’t call into the office unless you have an unpublished number)I went. After an hour wait, they told me they were closing and they would call me when they were ready to discuss it.. I contacted a Congressman’s office, and they told his office it was a mistake and would be fixed by February. March rolled around, and it still wasn’t fixed, so I called the 800 number where I was told it was in backlog and would be there until they were no longer behind. Another call in May, and they didn’t know what I was talking about and couldn’t figure out their records…I had to explain everthing to the lady, and only knew because I used to work for them at one time! Seven months later, and it still isn’t fixed.

I applaud your daughter and her friend for standing up for themselves in a situation that was clearly an abuse of power. While technically, the “rules” may say tickets are non-transferable, one of the objectives of an organization like the MTA is customer service, something in which this staunch law-abiding conductor is clearly unschooled. And finally, while the girls obviously were unaware that use of a different ticket would cause a problem, the fact that you, Mr. Salem, continue to attempt to do this while fully aware of the rules, is an abuse of power in and of itself.

Flattery, a no cost ever available resource, is, in many situations, the best weapon against abuse of power. Recently I visited a well known home improvement store to purchase an expensive tool that came with a $50 gift card mail-in rebate. As these things go, I utilized “self check-out” to save time and wound up spending fifteen minutes trying to find a store employee who could figure out how to get the self-service register to print the necessary rebate coupon. Finally, three employees gave up and turned me over to a manager, In turn, he concluded the task was difficult and in a voice clearly designed to get rid of me said that I should just call “headquarters” on Monday morning as “they” could surely help me. In my younger days I would have told him this was unbelievable and I would have stamped and steamed like a buffalo ready to charge and gore (a clear challenge to his authority); however with age hopefully comes the ability to pursuade. Instead, I commented upon how being a manager in such a big store having to make important decisions was a truly daunting task and no doubt given his experience and resourcefulness, there is surely some way we could take care of the situation now thus helping him avoid having to field a call from “headquarters” on Monday and saving me time. Viola! Within two minutes he produced a blank $50 gift card and proudly announced he would take care of the situation then and there.

Reading the comments pertaining to the temperature at which urine freezes in Canada? I’m honored to be in an ongoing discussion with you all.

Posted By Bing :

You are welcome, we try not to get too cerebral on you, cause we all know you have limited reading and comprehension skills; so keep up the fair work and we will keep posting at your level and giving you positive feed back.

@Rebecca from Philadelphia. I rode Septa for the past 5 years, and your story is obviously greatly exaggerated. Ok, so it’s kind of funny that in Bing’s article the train lady can be pumped up to be more monstrous, but your attempt falls very flat. Seeing how the conductors operate on Septa, which is quite professional in my opinion, your ’story’ sounds bogus.

It’s not about power. These people simply cannot function without rules, mindless habits, and structure. They are incapable of independent decision making and this is how they function. Guess what happens to the kids they raise? They get upset because they imagine you must be some kind of monster to even think of functioning differently.

Your conductor story is nothing. I was returning from Japan on Northwest Airlines, and switching planes in Detroit. One of the Northwest Airlines monsters with a walkie-talkie started screaming like a maniac at everyone to get on the bus or else. Ladies were crying. He was probably on dope. He just looked crazy, screaming at all the passengers and waving his walkie-talkie. Everyone was freezing cold and dog-tired. He should have been arrested. But I was told later this was not unusual behavior for Northwest Airlines.

Stan: I’ve always identified with you and yours. We are victims of an unconcerned, uncaring,troglydite society;a world in which unaduterated pure intellect and sweetness such as ours goes unrequited.

Some of the parochial,cuckoo nest replys to your daughters transgression are as scary as the conductor. How about a bell curve tracking the nut responses to idiot situations. Non powewr can not occur without the support of the non powerful who agree with all the conductors.

Jesus! You all seems to be crazy…

I have had more run-ins with evil parking attendants than Taliban, Afghan, or any other other segment of any culture. – it comes down to this – Domain.
They have geographical control over one tiny segment of the world and they exert maximum effort to remind anyone who doesn’t recognize you’re on their turf. Understand clearly; They are ultra-aware that this is the only place in their world where they have a shred of power.

Bing, I think you should take a field trip to the transfer station/garbage dump in town here, and try to get rid of your garbage with out a “permit”. My dad happens to run the place, and has an employee that is a perfect example of “absolutely no power corrupts”. If you do not have a permit, you may get verbally abused, or you may get a made up story/statistic/fairy tale about why you need one, two, or more “permits”. I happen to be the one that “hands” out these permits as part of my job, so I get to hear all about it. I think you would really like this guy.

He has worked for my dad for many years now, and not on purpose. He is known by the locals as “cigar”, “fist”, or I guess his name, followed by an explitive. He constantly chews (yes chews) on a slobbery cigar that he never lights, he “gels” his hair with what smells like motor-oil, and takes home as much garbage as he helps people throw away.

He seems to always have some serious ailment that calls for an operation, such as: getting a new “sheep valve” put in his heart, he also has a new “donkey spine” and his wife had to get new “bird legs”. Mind you, all of these operations were performed and healed in a day, and have to do with animals. The stories are endless and I’m sure my dad and the fellow coworkers would love to tell them.