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The Train Ticket Game: An Update
March 5th, 2007 at 00:58
It’s been over a year since I last updated you on the train game. What is the train game? Allow me to explain.
I always buy a ticket when I go on the train, because I’m a good citizen and all that. I do however, take exception that I’m made to feel like a criminal whenever the Stasi (Midland Mainline staff) demand to see my tickets. So I play a game. I try and avoid getting my ticket checked. Your ability to win at the game varies: it all depends on how obvious you make yourself. It’s easiest when you’ve got headphones in and a book to read, as you’re rarely disturbed. It also depends though, on how much of a jobsworth the ticket inspector is. Some will wave their hand in front of your eyes to catch your attention when they think you’re not paying attention, others will go so far as to physically poke you.
There’s been some interesting developments in recent weeks. They’ve put up some London Underground style ticket barriers at Leicester station, meaning that you need a ticket in order to get past them, and the other day as I was leaving the station an undercover ticket inspector tried to persecute me as I left the station. It’s a good job I’m not a Brazilian electrician, or I might not be here today telling you this story.
I initially ignored me as he said “hang on mate”, but he persisted, flipping down his wallet displaying his ticket inspector credentials. “Sorry”, I said, “I thought you were one of those people who harass you for money”, implying that he looked like a vagrant who tries to scrounge drug money off of commuters. “I’ll harass you for money if you don’t have your rail card“, he said to me in quite an aggressive tone. Was it a threat? Either way, he looked pretty miffed when I produced my rail card and a valid ticket – I could tell he was dying to go all Jack Bauer on me despite being nothing more than a ticket cunt (industry term).
But anyway, this game. How can I tell if I’m winning? To do that I’d have to have a spreadsheet detailing whether tickets have been checked or not going back a number of years… and you’d have to be mad or appear to be trying to make yourself autistic to have something like that.
Well, actually…
In the last 150 days of train journeys (some single, some return), I have spent £736.25 on train tickets, using a rail card 102 times – that’s 68% of the time. More importantly, I’ve had 135 tickets checked, and managed to ‘win’ and not get checked 86 times. That means I’m only being checked 61% of the time. I could have saved £198.65 if I’d had not bought tickets on days I’d not been checked travelling both OUT and RTN, and thus have justifiably spent £537.60.
This is a massive improvement by the staff at Midland Mainline, who before were only checking around 24% of my tickets. This is however, devastating for me, as it means I am doing less well. I attribute this change to my hair and beard growth, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Midland Mainline head office pushed their staff to harass more innocents to try and rape some more profit out of us.
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