TollBoothGuy
5 Years Experience
Brooklyn, NY
Male, 33
I spent just short of five years as a toll collector on the western end of New York State. Ask me anything, but please don't pay me in pennies.
Next time you go through, look for a small building on either side of the toll plaza. There should be a parking a lot attached to it, or very close by. Often, it's only accessible by way of the highway itself so collectors will have to go through toll lanes and pull in that way. That building is where a manger is (at some stations), where we eat, take our breaks, and generally try to forget that we are toll collectors.
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Collectors where I worked are not necessarily required to flag counterfeit money, but they are required to fill out a form at the end of their shift tying all large bills to the vehicles that paid with them. When they do receive a 50 or 100 dollar bill they are required to take down the vehicle's plate number along with the serial number of the bill. That way, if the bill is rejected by the bank that is counting the deposit, the agency has some sort of information on where the bill came from. As with so many other jobs, sometimes the paper trail is just as important as the end result.
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This might be my favorite question. I would absolutely count out every single penny. I always advised anyone paying with a substantial amount of change that I would need to count it all before they left. I would then proceed to make little penny stacks, ten at a time. When I reached 130 identical penny stacks, I would let you go. The thing about being in a box with people moving all around you is that motivation to move fast can be hard to find. The only reward for moving cars is more cars and cars are basically the bane of your existence. I never liked having a long line but it was often unavoidable and as long as there are other lanes available I never felt too bad. Except for the few poor souls directly behind the troublemaker. Now, I'm not sure what collectors on the Bridge have been advised to do in that kind of situation, but from my perspective I am responsible for all of the money that I (don't) take in and I have to answer for any discrepancy in my deposit. That being said, I had a lot of people drop a lot of change on me and drive off. In that situation, I would always try to grab a plate number and a vehicle description if they were short. But again, all of this might and probably diverges from what collectors on the Bridge do. Also, I'm slowly dying on the inside while all of this is happening.
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First and foremost, I too, am a huge fan of Fridays, FridayLover. We don't really have a procedure for handling rude and confused tourists. We're out there to collect tolls, and that's about it. Confusion is one thing. When I had wide-eyed drivers pull up with literally no idea what was happening, I just had to exercise as much patience with them as I could and get them onto the same page. Even getting people to open their windows and reach out to take the toll ticket from me when they were entering was sometimes a challenge. I had some comical stare downs with drivers who didn't speak English. It was interesting because I was doing something completely mundane, while they were doing something completely new. Even getting them to pull away after paying their toll was a challenge sometimes. That being said, being a confused tourist with a smile on your face will get you a whole lot farther than the alternative. Being confused shouldn't give you a license to be rude though. If you don't like that we aren't a currency exchange, or that our collectors don't know if certain malls have certain stores, or that we can't give you a satisfactory answer as to why there is a toll road here at all, that's fine. But there's really no need to berate a toll collector. And if you do, Canadian or not, don't be surprised when you don't get a very nice response. And I totally get that you don't want to take American change back to Canada, but if you guys could cool it on the 315 pennies for a 3.15 toll, my brethren would appreciate it.
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Casino Dealer
How do you prove that someone is card-counting?
School Teacher
How do you see parents failing in their children's education?
Special Education Teacher
How come it often takes years to figure out that a kid is dyslexic?
I get the premise, but I don't think this one works in practice. You might have a collector that just waves you though without counting, and even if they count every single penny I don't know if you'd be buying the kind of time you need. One thing that we can all agree on is that the Westboro Baptists are insane.
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I never lied to anyone about what I did for a living. I actually enjoyed talking about it because the eyes of whoever I was talking to almost always lit up out of curiosity when I mentioned that I collected tolls. I can’t tell you how many times people countered with ‘Oh my god, I’ve always wanted to ask...’ Toll collecting is kind of a depressing profession though. There’s just no way around it. I don’t know if anyone out there would readily say that they were proud of what they or the organization did day to day. But I would say there is a certain satisfaction in going out there, being dependable, and doing a good job in any profession. Personally, I tried to inject as much levity into the whole situation as I could and document all the ridiculous things that happened out there so I could have some good party stories. The two things that helped me the most was the high likelihood of not being being a lifer and the fact that I had anywhere between 1-3 jobs during most of this time period. I never felt that toll collecting defined me as a person. Rather, it was just a ridiculous thing that I did to live like any other person. I am proud to have met and worked with the people that I did, and contrary to what you might believe, I worked alongside a lot of intelligent, strong, thoughtful individuals. And a fair share of idiots.
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Technically, no. We are not a currency exchange but the agency I worked at did accept Canadian currency for toll payment at a variable rate that they set. In my five years at the agency, the discount rate varied from 10-30%. This meant that a patron paying a toll with Canadian currency might be credited with as little as 70 cents for every dollar tendered.
So yes, you can pay a toll with Canadian money, but the international exchange rate will not be taken into consideration. Additionally, I cannot speak for agencies further south of where I worked but I would imagine the farther south you go, the less likely Canadian currency will be accepted.
A collector might exchange the Canadian money for you, but be cautious of the rate it is discounted at.
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