What, this thread is back? Man. You know how hard it was to stay mad for the few days this thread was up? Hang on. Let me put on my asshole face again…
I don’t just take it to and from work. I go other places, too, like to happy hours or Nats games. So I have no idea how many trips it’ll be.
It doesn’t tell you how much is left on the card like it does with the SmarTrip card. So you just have to estimate or keep meticulous tabs on it.
I didn’t know how much you have to have to enter the system. Apparently, it’s $1.30 or $1.40, I forget. I had $1.10.
Pfsh. No. It’s been two+ weeks, man! Nothing! I finally called them today and they’re like “Oh, yeah, there’s a backlog.” Then she told me I can keep waiting or just go buy a new card and they’ll transfer the balance. Awesome. Looks like I’ll just pay the $5, get a new one from CVS, and hope that they transfer the balance smoothly. I’m told that can be a nightmare, too.
And how, exactly, did your failure to keep accurate track of your Metro card entitle you to jump the turnstile? I fail to see how impatience and a casual disregard for the details qualifies you as anyone’s social better. A person truly conscious of his/her own self-worth would have sucked it up in line, understood how a temporary lapse in competence led to the situation, and taken steps to make sure such a thing didn’t happen again instead of stewing in a poorly-concocted broth of self-righteous indignation and waiting long enough to spew misdirected venom on a message board against someone doing their job, a/k/a not letting a turnstile jumper off the hook.
TLDR for impatient fuckwits like you: You fucked up and got called on it. Suck it up, princess.
Classic mistake. All of those attributes can be acquired by hard work, determination, and skill. They are also routinely handed out to children of the fortunate. Even governorships (Senate seats, “attorney generalships,” what have you). Just look at some of the dynastic families like the Bushes, Kennedys, Rockefellers, and so on. Degrees too – I’ve heard of people who got easy medical degrees at Caribbean party schools because they had enough money to go to Caribbean party schools.
Privileged people (and their inheriting children) always profess to believe that superior talent got them there, and never admit that in some cases they were there at birth, and in some cases, only coasted in on a “gentleman’s C.”
All of these are things you could have and should have accounted for. Yeah, it blows, but it’s still *your problem *to keep track of it.
You could have maintained two cards–one with X days worth of work fares on it, and one with just a chunk of cash for other outings. That way, you would always be certain of how many round-trip work fares you had.
You could have kept track of how much money you’d spent on the card you did get.
You could have checked on the entry fee, since you should have known it would be relevant information.
This is all on you, ol’ buddy ol’ pal. Rather than wait in line because you neglected to have enough money on your temp card to pay the fare, you *chose *to circumvent the way the system tracks fares. At your destination, the employee you spoke to had *no way of knowing *where you actually got on the train, but after giving you an entirely appropriate lecture on how you’d fucked up, let you go anyway.
I just noticed something here that is in painful need of further calling out.
If I read the OP correctly, you said you’d been using paper cards for Metro rides. Unless things have changed greatly since I left DC three years ago, this is absolutely not the case. The amount is printed on the card each time you go through the exit gate in a neat little column of figures. Doesn’t take much effort to glance at the damn thing. On to the next item:
If your first premise is accepted as true (even if the DC Teeming Millions can probably back me up that it’s not), how did you know how much you had on the ticket? If it’s not printed on the ticket, you obviously kept meticulous tabs on the amount, thereby pretty much rendering your whole argument moot. If you knew how much was on the ticket, you knew you needed to add money to it - but you’re so goddamned IMPORTANT and BETTER than the rest of us that the rules don’t apply to you. So not only did you act like a jackass, you knew you were doing so - which is why you shut up and took the mild reaming from Jamal like the chickenshit you are and came on here to make yourself look like the put-upon victim of alleged reverse racism.
I’m sorry, man. No fucking sympathy. In fact, active antipathy because it’s pretty clear you meant to act like a fuckwad throughout this whole situation.
Different issue. **Chessic **tried to *enter *with insufficient fare and then pay the balance at the exit, despite having no proof of how much he owed.
Except the Metro is overall a pretty damned good system, with polite and helpful staff in general. It’s just been subsidized so much for so long that people get a bit of a shock if the prices have to go up.
There are similar instructions for where to go to eat and walk around. Poor little flowers.
I think we should install British 1940’s style invasion defense tactics, such as removing all street signs. If you live here it is easy enough to get around without them (assuming the ability to count and a knowledge of the alphabet, so another set of advantages we have over the teabaggers).
Then when they ask directions we can send them to “dangerous” areas where they might see black folk and die of shock.