Revenue protection
I wonder how much attention transit officers pay when examining tickets. I got approached by one this evening on my way home from work — he asked that I show him my ticket, and I gladly obliged. I pulled out my ticket and showed it to him, he looked at it for a few seconds, nodded, then proceeded on to the next guy.
Now, this all sounds pretty normal. However, the only problem was, I pulled out a ticket that expired a while ago by mistake. (I really should get rid of these old tickets from my wallet…)
If the whole purpose of a revenue protection officer is to protect revenue, then these guys arn’t exactly doing a very satisfactory job. I’ve seen plenty of times when people just walk through the barriers without a ticket, sometimes in the view of such officers and other station staff, who don’t seem to care much about it and continue chatting with their friends.
In a sense, I don’t blame them. Having read an article on SMH regarding the powers (or rather, the lack thereof) of transport officers, it must be somewhat difficult for them to do anything considering the offender has the right to walk away without being detained (and since I’m not a lawyer, I’ll just assume the article is factually correct).
Which then begs the question: why have revenue protection officers that don’t actually have the necessary powers to do their job?
it’s so they can catch international students who are too poor to afford tickets and to quieten those noisy school students down
and to do the almighty ‘where’s your concession card check’
responsible asian men don’t need close scrutiny