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.
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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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.
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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.
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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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Help Desk Technician
What's the closest you've come to "losing it" on someone you were helping?
Hotel Employee
Can you give guests room upgrades at your sole discretion?
Geek Squad Agent/Supervisor
What's the biggest scene a customer's ever made in the store?
I HAVE NO IDEA
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The starting pay is certainly more fair now than it was when I started at 9 and change, and the scheduled raises are a nice thing to count on. If collectors make themselves available across the board it isn't terribly difficult to reach the 70 hour bonus mark, especially during the summer months. I guess the downside to this arrangement is that your earning potential really plateaus after the five-year mark. Whether overall compensation is fair is to up to each employee, coupled with the economic demographics of a very large state. I will say that I, along with many other part-time collectors, worked multiple part-time jobs while I was employed as a collector.
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Without getting on the Toll Collector Batphone to speak to that particular collector, it's really difficult for me to offer an answer here. Nothing that you describe seems to warrant logging your license plate number but without being there it's really impossible for me to say. Different agencies have different rules and the circumstances that I described in the answer to your original question only speak for the agency that I worked for.
I will say this- collectors don't really enjoy getting out of the booth and filling out extra forms, so I am going to wager a guess that he was required to take down your license plate number, whatever the reason might be.
Sometimes I got out of the booth first and took the plate number of the vehicle before I started the transaction, but I typically explained what I was doing as I was completing the exchange. If you asked him why he was taking down your plate number, and you didn't receive a satisfactory answer, then that's just some plain old bad customer service.
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