Railway Ticket Inspector
When I worked at Northampton railway station part of the job was to inspect / collect tickets as people entered and left the station. I had a pair of clippers and a peaked cap - and a book of rules and regulations, the thickness of which varied according to the customers' attitude.

Polite husbands seeing their wives off, or groups of nice young girls would be admitted to the platform with a friendly "good morning" but woe betide the businessman who came running up 30 seconds before the train was due to leave expecting to be let in to "buy a ticket on the train". He would be directed towards the back of the queue, or if I was feeling particularly nasty, the ticket machine which would invariably refuse to accept notes less than 5 minutes old and still warm from the mint.

The best way to annoy me would be to ask to use the toilet. Back of the queue and buy a platform ticket - which were so rarely sold (except for on MY shift!) they kept them at the back of the drawer and had to hunt for them. Even better if the person was dying for a pee.

The automatic ticket barriers had a side gate which was strictly for large bags, pushchairs and bicycles, etc. Bags were to be pushed through the flap. Of course, when a train arrived at 5pm and 500 people got off it took a while for them to exit one at a time through the barriers so they would try to open the gate. Locked. One bicycle would be allowed through and they would all push towards the gate. I would simply close it, my back turned to avoid the dirty looks. Those who complained they were in a hurry immediately made me go twice as slow, and anyone saying they would be late would be shown a timetable and the train which left an hour earlier would be pointed out.

A rather annoying family off to London for a day out entered the platform area using their tickets then 5 minutes later returned to go to the shop. The barrier of course "ate" the tickets so I was called to let them out. When they failed to learn from their mistake and lost their tickets a second time I spent obout two minutes scrutinising each one to "check they hadn't been tampered with" and watched as they ran for the train with mere seconds to go. I would love to have seen their faces as they were challenged by every automatic ticket barrier in London and forced to show their tickets to a fellow stony-faced inspector to get past. Why? I had punched a hole in the centre of the magnetic "stripe" on each ticket.

Other than that I'm quite nice really.

I make no aplogies for length. It's in the rules you know
( Amos E Wolfe makes vinyl signs and things like that, Thu 12 May 2005, 13:07, Reply)