During all my time in France, I’ve come across any number of small differences between life here and life in Australia, in all kinds of tiny ways. Some of them are useful, like the boulangeries or the comprehensive train network. Others are irritating, like the bureaucracy, or the doggie souvenirs all over the footpaths. One, however, exasperates me to the point of insanity (which is maybe taking my annoyance insanely far) and has become my absolute pet peeve – fare evaders.
We have fare evaders in Australia, too, but it’s much easier and much more impersonal. Many train stations in Australia don’t have any kind of ticket gates or barriers, so those who wish can just walk straight onto the train. In France, however, every station has a ticket gate, and sometimes in the bigger stations like Chatelet-Les Halles there are ticket barriers between the RER and the metro areas, even though they’re each validated-ticket areas themselves. The metro stations have barriers, too, but the key difference lies in the type of barriers. This is where things get interesting.
The metro stations have three-armed turnstiles with a small door after them, designed to be difficult to open from mid-air if you’re trying to jump or climb over the turnstile. It is, however, possible – I’ve seen it done many times by people jumping the turnstiles to get into the metro. It’s wrong, but at least I don’t have to worry about it, I’m not involved in any way, and I can just let them get caught by the bevy of inspectors frequently hanging around Censier-Daubenton metro station.
In the RER stations, however, they have automatic metal gates taller than a person, which slide open at the insertion of a valid ticket and remain open just long enough for one person to walk through. I walk up, touch my transport pass and walk through while the next guy touches his pass to keep the gate open and follows me through. Easy. Unfortunately, these gates AREN’T easy for the fare evaders. Unlike the metro ones, where you can swing your legs over the waist-high turnstile with relative discretion, the gates are too close to slip between and too tall to scale without climbing onto the ticket-checking machine and literally stepping over the top – which is sort of noticeable for any public transport officials who may be nearby (which is not to say I haven’t seen it done – and with a bicycle nonetheless).
Instead, the Evil Fare Evaders at RER stations have come up with a new way to avoid buying a ticket – use someone else’s. They hang around the entrance barriers at the RER station – the outdoor entrance at the suburban stations – and wait for a person with a ticket to come along. Once they’ve walked into the barrier stall to scan their ticket, the EFE walks up behind them and blockades them into the stall like a racehorse. When the barrier opens and the person walks through, the EFE puts their hands across the gate slots to prevent them from closing again and follows the other person through, letting the gates shut behind them.
This irritates the hell out of me.
It’s happened to me more than once. When I approach the station there’s usually once or two guys (it’s always men, never ever seen a woman do it), older (30s+), and though I hate to racially profile they’re often Indian or black, who are just standing around paying a little too much attention to anyone who approaches the ticket barriers and is carrying or pulling out a ticket. Once you’ve walked into a stall, you’re fair game, and with them standing behind you, you can’t exactly just back out. Instead I usually stop just short of the barriers and pretend to rifle around in my bag for my wallet until someone else lets them through, or if they corner me in the stalls then I use my transport pass’s temperamental nature to my advantage and pretend to be stuck.
But for me, the worst part is that they EXPECT it. They believe it’s their right to be let through the barriers by someone else, even though you’re paying for the service and they’re not. If you refuse to go along with it and let them scrounge off your hard-paid public transport access, then you become the bad guy. Recently, pissed at the situation and not wanting to give anyone a literal free ride, I tried waving through a guy who was trying to follow me into the barriers (“No, you go. “No, please.” “No, go right ahead.”) He got sick of it pretty quickly and instead followed another hapless victim who walked up at the same time, but he took the time to turn and give me the finger as he walked through. He then waited for me to pass through the barriers before turning and giving me an earful – all for not letting him pass through the paying ticket barriers for free on my own personal public transport pass (which I do pay for, by the way).
How do they get so entitled? I mean, a fare evader in Australia is at least honest about the fact that they’re being dishonest. They never drag anyone else into their schemes and just do it themselves. If they can’t get around the rules themselves, they don’t fare evade. But here, people expect you to help them dodge the law and to pay for their ticket. It’s their RIGHT, and if you infringe upon it by insisting that they, oh, I dunno, pay for their own ticket, suddenly everything’s your fault and you’re the one who’s broken the social code. It makes me SO MAD. Cheating is one thing, but unwillingly roping innocent bystanders into helping you cheat is just a new form of low. And they don’t even seem to notice that there’s anything wrong with it.
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