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.
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.
Standard bureaucratic wait time. It's been about eight years since I've taken it so you'll have to forgive my memory, but If I recall correctly it takes about six weeks to recieve the results in the mail.
It's going to vary from agency to agency. In my case, I took the civil service test in January and was called in for an interview in July. If they are hiring a class of collectors from a test, they run down the list based on test scores, so in theory the better you score, the sooner you might be able to expect an interview. Once I was hired, I spent one day getting my fingerprints taken, background checked and going through classroom training at headquarters and two days training in the field with another collector. After that, I was a bona-fide part-time toll collector.
That being said, some of my co-workers were hired without taking the test because it wasn't being offered at the time. They were allowed to start working immediately and were required to take the test when it was next offered.
Nothing complicated here. There were crosswalks behind the booths spanning the toll lanes. If there's a car in the lane, we are taught to make visual contact with both the driver and the collector manning the lane. When we've ensured that it is safe to cross, we do so.
Sorry that this answer doesn't include something about a complex set of tunnels. There's an OSHA video out there somewhere that manages to make this even less interesting.
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The exam that I took had three sections. The first was vehicle classification, consisting of pictures of a variety of combinations. Tolls often vary by type of vehicle, and collectors are audited, so being able to classify and charge the appropriate toll is critical to the job. The second section consisted of adding up money that was printed on the page. (Which I found substantially more difficult than actually having real money in front of me to pick up and count.) The third section consisted of totaling up deposit slips.
I'm sure different exams vary from agency to agency.
I HAVE NO IDEA
Varies. I can only speak from my experience. When I started I was in the 9 dollar range. By the time I left nearly five years later I believe I was up to the 13-14 dollar range.
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