Red Letter Haze

We all have the occasional bad experience when riding the CTA. I’m pretty sure that it’s included in the fares when you’re purchasing a card. We’re all subjected to delays, crowded trains, and obnoxious fellow riders. Tonight however, crossed the line of a typical bad experience.
 

My boyfriend and I were on our way home after a nice day with friends and decided to take the Red Line home from Belmont. Chris has a U-Pass from school, and I have a Chicago Plus Card (which has been giving me problems lately anyway). Chris went through the turnstyle and was waiting for me to come through when the turnstyle instructed me to “retouch fastcard”. Before I could retouch it, someone exited through the turnstyle I was trying to use, so I just moved to the next one. This time the turnstyle wouldn’t let me through thinking I had just tried to use it, telling me “one use only”. 

Since Chris was already through the gate, he told me to ask the attendant for help. I walked over to him in the booth, and told him what happened. The attendant came out of the booth and immediately accused us of trying to cheat the system by using one card twice (ie. letting chris through with my card then trying to go through myself). After he insisted he “saw” me do it, Chris showed him his U-Pass to prove that we did indeed have two cards, not one. He looked over to him, and then turned back to me without a word of acknowledgment.  He then moved to the gate to open it to let a biker through, and blocked me with his body from entering the gate. Then he insisted that I must have just left the station and came back in (how that makes sense, I have no idea) or I just got off the bus (which would be a transfer, and also made no sense) and that the card can only be used so many times within a certain timeframe. 

By this point Chris had come back through the turnstyle to try to reason with the attendant. The attendant then turned to my boyfriend, and began calling him a liar for his explanation as well. He then yelled at us to come back after 12 minutes and try again.  He then locked himself back in his booth.  

We both left, completely shocked that we had just been yelled at, and now both out of a ride since he had forfeited his when coming back through the turnstyle. We walked over to Addison Red Line stop and luckily this time neither of our passes gave us any difficulty. 

Thanks to some of my followers on Twitter, I was given suggestions on how to file a complaint, since the customer service number on the back of my card was no help at all. As soon as Chris and I got home, we were emailing our complaints to not only the CTA but also to Going Public (a blog on the CTA from the Chicago Tribune) and the CTAtattler. 

I don’t expect the CTA to really do anything about the situation, but I would hate to think I wasn’t the only one getting such horrible treatment from this person. We are all entitled to have bad days and sometimes we take it out on people we shouldn’t, but behaviour like that crosses the line into unacceptable and unprofessional. I’m honestly rethinking my decision to utilize with public transportation and to bring my car to Chicago. If I’m going to spend my money in a way that’s going to get me treated like that, I’d rather it be because of road rage, not because of someone’s incompetence in customer service.