Yesterday, for the first time in quite a while, I took the VRE back and forth to work, because I had to go to a lab for a blood draw (but didn’t I just have one of those the other week? I did, this was different, more on that later) and the earliest they could take me was 7:30 a.m. and by that time I figured the traffic on 66 and the parking at the Vienna Metro would both be odious, and since I was going to be late to work anyway and in no rush to get home (my wife being home with the little guy on her day off and the rush to a daycare pickup thus not in play) I might as well take the less-stressful means of transportation.
The ride into Rosslyn was less stressful, I’ll give it that. The ride home included cooling my heels in the vestibule between cars and a verbal dressing down complete with threats of massive fines and jail time. So … oops?
The first time I took the VRE, back in December, I purchased a ten-ride ticket from an automated kiosk. I vaguely recall something about needing to validate the ticket before boarding the train, and you could do that at the kiosk too, and I did. No biggie. Then I sat in the upper level of the double-decker car, and never saw a conductor until I got off the train. In the evening I boarded the train, same deal, same results. The next occasion I had to ride the VRE was during one of the winter’s Book of Snow-shovelation events, and the train was on a crazy staggered schedule and on the ride home I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with people in the vestibule. I think at one point the conductor in the vestibule said “OK, everyone show me your tickets” and we all laughed. That crowded chaos pretty much led directly to me forsaking the VRE for the slightly more weather-impervious Metro, although I did wind up on the VRE another time or two. In other words, I used six or eight of my ten rides.
But nobody but me seemed to know how many rides I had used, because I rarely if ever saw the conductors. And, I admit, this did strike me as a little bit odd. I had a ticket I would have been more than happy to produce on demand, but I never was asked to do so. I figured the train operators had bigger things to worry about than catching every single person who tried to bilk a free ride, and kind of let things slide in a spot-checking, honor system kind of way. And I never got spot-checked.
So, yesterday evening. I’m sitting on the train and I do see a conductor patrolling the car checking tickets, and I flash him the plastic holder that has my VRE ticket (as well as my work badge and Metro pass). He asks me to hand him the ticket, and I do, and then he looks at me disbelievingly and says “What is this?” To which I reply “It’s a ten-ride ticket?” Which got me an invitation to join the conductor in the vestibule to continue our discussion.
The conductor broke it down for me: you’re supposed to feed your ticket into the machine on the platform to validate it before you board the train every time you board the train, not just the first ride of ten. OK, that seems awfully straightforward in hindsight but I honestly did not realize that. What I should have told the conductor, in my defense (but didn’t, because I was so flustered), is that I’m from New Jersey and I’ve ridden commuter trains to NYC many times, and on those trains the conductors ask to see your ticket and punch it for you there on the train and that’s kind of what I was expecting on the VRE. The reason I was too flustered to think straight is because the conductor took it upon himself to come down fairly heavy-handed on me, pointing out to me that there is fine print on the back of the ticket that says you must validate it before boarding the train and failure to do so can result in a $500 fine or jail time. I admitted that I was responsible for misunderstanding and it was my mistake, but the conductor was more than a little convinced that I had been scamming free rides for quite some time.
It was one of those perfectly impossible situations. On the one hand, yeah, I had a ten-ride ticket dated December 22, 2009 that had only been validated once. By the return trip on May 17 it should have been validated, theoretically, at least four times, twice when I bought it and twice for the current roundtrip, and it wasn’t, so I’m already in the wrong. And my story about only using the train for four or five roundtrips in six months seems unlikely, even though it’s completely true. My defense about expecting conductors to validate my ticket but understanding why they didn’t when half the trips were during blizzards and the other half might have been simple oversights was also suspiciously convenient, but true, but worse than that hard to press because it amounts to me telling the conductor “Yes, you are the first one to catch me, because your fellow conductors I guess are lazy and or incompetent?”
And since I’m already the bad guy in this story, let me just take it to the next level of douchery. I suspect the conductor really wanted me to quake in my boots about the potential punishments, but I didn’t, and that may have hardened him against me even more. The jail time threat didn’t faze me at all, because I knew there was really no chance. First offense because of a stupid misunderstanding? I might have to cut some kind of deal but no way would I go to jail. The fine also didn’t faze me, not because I thought I could get out of it, but because I could roll with it. $500 is not a joke to me, and it would piss me off, but I would take it out of savings and move on. My two major concerns, after the conductor had read me the riot act in the vestibule, were as follows: first, I was afraid he would toss me off the train at the next stop. At which point I could buy another ticket and get back on the next train, but that would cost me half an hour, and I really wanted to get home and offer some relief to my wife after her long day trying to reestablish household routines with both our son and our dogs after a weekend away. The secondary concern came about due to the conductor asking for my driver’s license and then disappearing to write me a citation (accompanied by the parting shot, as self-serious as a freaking Mega-City Street Judge: “You BROKE the LAW, sir.”) – I was somewhat concerned that the train would get to my stop before he got back and I would be forced to choose between getting off and going home, writing off the license as lost and risking incurring further conductor wrath for skipping summary judgment, or staying on the train until my license was returned and I was dismissed, but ending up at the end of the line a ways from my car and home.
Fortunately he came back before we got to my stop and started to lecture me again, this time emphasizing how there are so many explanations all over the place of how the ticket validating works that there was no excuse for me misunderstanding it, and that he didn’t believe my story. I did what I’ve always done in situations like that, falling on self-abasement and obsequiousness. I assured the conductor I understood where he was coming from and called myself stupid a few dozen different ways. I got my license back, a first offense warning with the ominous promise that now that they had my ID info if I ever tried to scam rides again I would be a known repeat offender, and the conductor confiscated my ten-ride ticket. Which I had pretty much used up anyway.
(Would I have kept trying to ride the VRE with that ticket, figuring it was still good for nine more rides until some conductor started noticing and punching rides off it for me? I’m not proud of this, but I might have. Probably. So, karma-wise, I can’t complain about how it all ended.)
I was incredibly relieved when I got off the train at my intended destination and arrival time, and all I had to worry about was remembering where I had parked my car. And once I got to my car, I got the ultimate kicker for the whole tale: a parking ticket. Did I mention how rarely I take the VRE, and thus how rarely I use the parking garage? Apparently in the morning I had blown past the (small, poorly marked) signs indicating where commuter parking in the garage ended and four-hour midday parking began, and since there were no commuter spots left at 7:45, I parked in the wrong place. $25 fine. Man, that is how they get ya.
Weirdly, the parking ticket is almost a psychological blessing, because while the VRE conductor may have failed to power trip on making me feel helplessly terrified in the face of his iron horse authority, he did succeed in making me feel guilty (though I am an admittedly soft touch for that) and the fact that he let me off with a warning kind of made the guilt worse, because I had screwed up and hadn’t really been punished. The parking ticket is a slap on the wrist, but that’s oddly better than nothing.
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