BUS STORY # 482 (Card Not Valid)

Photo by Busboy

A woman with a grocery cart boards and runs her pass through the slot.

“Card not valid,” the machine says.

She swipes it again.

“Card not valid.”

She tells the driver she just bought this card and there must be something wrong with it.

People are backed up waiting for her and the driver tells her to go ahead and have a seat for now.

She sits on the bench seat behind the driver, with her cart in front of her. People have to turn sideways to step by.

When everyone has boarded, she stands back up to return to the till.

The guy sitting across from her hands her his bus pas. “Here,” he says, “use mine. It works.”

She takes the card up to the driver and swipes it.

“Card not valid.”

She tells the driver the machine is broken because “his card” -- she points to the guy sitting on the bench seat -- doesn’t work, either.

The driver tells her she can’t use another rider’s bus pass. And besides, the card reader has been working just fine all morning.

She shows the driver her card and says she just got it. I can see from where I’m sitting it’s one of the monthly senior passes.

The driver takes her pass and looks at it. Then she puts it into the activation slot. It gets pulled down into the slot, then pushed back up. The driver takes the pass and hands it back to the woman.

“You have to activate it before you can swipe it,” she explains.

The rider then starts to swipe the pass.

The driver tells her she doesn’t have to swipe it when she activates it the first time.

The woman starts back to her seat, hands the man his card back, and says, “I guess we got that taken care of.”