March of the Morons
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a life time. Give that man a hat and a name badge and watch him disappear up his own ass.
Recently I took a journey from Wimbledon to Clapham Junction on the overground service. It’s a short journey that takes less than 10 minutes on a route that thousands and thousands of people use everyday. There was nothing controversial or vaguely interesting about it until I got to Clapham and met a living , breathing , dictionary definition of a jobsworth.
I hate those people so much. These are the types that feel it is their duty to let you know that they wield a tiny amount of power and they are not afraid to use it. They seem to take a sadistic pleasure in being unrepentantly petty. Someone once said to me that it was the revenge of the stupid and that I should just let them play their little games but these are the only types of people that actually provoke murderous feelings in me. It’s something about their dull-eyed smugness and their complete failure to respond to any kind of normal logic that gets me. I swear that they’re employed on the strength of the armour of stupidity that they wear. To find a slight chink in it is almost impossible and that can drive a normally sedate person insane. On the whole I’m a very passive man who deplores physical violence but I can easily imagine that the day will come when an encounter with one of these people will push me over the edge and into a cycle of violence that’ll culminate with me gleefully dancing around a fire wearing a human skin. I almost had to kill a woman once in the New York Public library for being a complete jobsworth but that’s another story.
I digress…
When I got to the ticket barrier in the station I inserted my ticket but found the machine didn’t like the flavour so spat it back out at me and insisted that I seek assistance from one of the ticket Nazis impatiently waiting to give someone some unnecessary hassle. I approached one of these ticket inspectors or “revenue protection officers” as their name badges state and handed him my ticket explaining the problem. Now I am used to these guys treating people with openly hostile suspicion but the following exchange was a giddy little prance down the most surreal of avenues.
Inspector: You couldn’t get through because your ticket is not valid for travel today.
Me: I don’t understand I just bought the ticket.
Inspector: It’s not a valid ticket. This ticket is for June sir.
Somehow these guys have a special way of pronouncing “sir” so it sounds like “you fucking liar”
Me: June? As in last summer? But I just bought it.
Inspector: This ticket is dated for June this year. It’s not a valid ticket sir. You can’t travel on it today.
Me: But I just bought this from the ticket office at Wimbledon only 15 minutes ago. Why would they give me a ticket for this June?
Inspector: ( with great suspicion ) I don’t know , you tell me.
Me: Are you serious?
Inspector: Well I just think it’s bit strange that you have this ticket and you are trying to travel on it today and this ticket is not for today.
Me: Well what do you think I did? Do you think I went up to the ticket office and said “I want to travel to Clapham Junction on the 18th of June this year and I would like buy a ticket now just to make sure I get a seat?” That’s ridiculous.
At this point the inspector gave me a look that suggested that that was exactly what he thought I had done and that this was all part of a bigger plan to hoodwink South West Trains. He stood examining the ticket as if it might perhaps be a counterfeit , rubbing the print with his thumb.
Inspector: I don’t think the man at Wimbledon would sell you this ticket.
Me: No?
Inspector: No
Me: Why?
Inspector: Because this ticket is not for today.
Me: So what do you think happened?
Inspector: You tell me.
Me: Well the only other option that we have left here is that I am some sort of time traveller and I have journeyed from the future with this ticket.
Here he gave me a look up and down perhaps to see whether I looked the time travelling type.
Inspector: I am not satisfied with your explanation.
Me: Well it‘s the only one I‘ve got for you seeing as you’re unwilling to believe it could be your companies mistake. Listen to what you are suggesting. This is bizarre. Are you seriously going to hold me up here for a mistake that your ticket office has made?
At this juncture he kissed his teeth at me , examined the ticket some more and called his colleague over.
Inspector #2: What’s the problem sir?
Me: It seems that I have a ticket from the future. I don’t know why I was sold it , I don’t know what it means , but your friend here thinks that this is all part of an elaborate plan to defraud you in some way. My ticket is not out of date because it hasn’t even had the chance to be in date yet. It’s all paid for but this guy seems to think something much bigger is afoot and I just want to get on with my day rather then lose much more of it down to his skewed imaginings.
The new inspector took a brief view of my ticket and told me I could go , much to the disappointment of his colleague who looked convinced that he had let some sort of time-travelling , fare-bunking , evil genius slip through his fingers. “Next time you should check your ticket” he called after me unwilling to let me leave without offering me some sage advice from his obviously far superior intellect.
As I walked out of the station I suppressed the urge to use my time travelling powers to go back to the 20th century and to kill his unsuspecting grandfather to ensure that he would never be born.
