Tokens

I’d just sat down for the graveyard shift in the booth at 68th and Lex, with this Little Old Italian clerk working next to me.  I’d never seen him before.  Aside from opening the door for me, he wasn’t very friendly.

I had this weird feeling that I should do a “proper relief.”  That’s basically an inventory of everything in the booth. “Don’t worry,” the little man said to me, “the guy before you just did one. It’s fine.”

Against the man’s objections, I counted 70 boxes of tokens, each holding 1,000.  I did notice, though, that the spare booth key was missing. 

“It was gone when I got here,” the little man said.

I was about to hit the EBCS button—Emergency Booth Communication System—to connect me to a supervisor at HQ—when the little man grabbed my hand.

“Don’t worry, I’m here with you!” the little man shouted, flustered.  “No one will bother us.”

I hit it anyway—I wanted that lock changed. 

A supervisor showed up a few minutes later. 

The old man was tapping his foot and twiddling his thumbs.  He shifted in his seat, started sweating, said the booth was hot, and he wanted to go out and get air.  But he couldn’t because the supervisor was there.

Just at that moment, one of 68th and Lex’s regular clerks, who I’d never met before, came down into the station.  He was wearing plain clothes.  He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw his boss standing there.  He played it cool for a couple minutes, until this other guy in tattered clothes came down and shouted, “What is taking so long?”

That supervisor knew right then what was going on.  The Italian man had given the booth key to the guys earlier so that they could open the door on me when he stepped out to “get air.”  It was a setup for them to scheme the MTA out of 70,000 tokens and make it look like negligence—like I didn’t lock the door or I’d let a stranger into the booth.  And if my intuition hadn’t told me to do a “proper relief,” they’d have gotten away with it, too.  I hear what they tried that night is a pretty common occurrence.  

Either way, they got fired.  And I got a raise. 

Best friends

I got on the 6 train going uptown at Bleecker. I never get on at Bleecker, you know. I had just finished seeing a crappy show in the area. I was all distraught over it. I got on the train and made eye contact with this really cute goth-ish guy. He was looking at pictures in his camera. I started writing in my journal about the totally crappy show. He looked over at what I was writing. I then started looking at the photos in his camera. We shared a smile. 

I usually get off at 68th street, but I rode an extra stop just to be with him.

I have heard about people meeting and making a connection on the train. I never had until then. 

The next stop came and I started to get off. I smiled at him and turned to go. The doors started to close. He darted off the train, and he told me he wanted to get to know me better . Totally didn’t want it to be a missed connection. 

We hit it off right away—but of course...he had a girlfriend, but it wasn’t about that. We didn’t let that stop us from getting to know each other, and two years later we are still all totally close friends.