Last night, after my girls' "restaurant club" dinner in midtown, one of the girls and I headed for the 50th St. station to catch the C/E trains downtown. Because we were babbling, as girls can do, we didn't pay attention and ended up on the uptown side of the tracks. I'd already swiped my card, but figured it wouldn't be a major problem to go thru the turnstile going downtown, once we found the correct station entrance. Not so, my friends. I went up to the booth in the downtown station, explained to the agent I'd accidently walked into the wrong station, and would it be possible go thru the turnstile on this side. Simple question, no? Rather than saying, "sure, no problem" or "sorry, you gotta pay again" this agent proceeded to tell me I should have looked at the sign, and if that other station was the wrong station, should they just close it, since it's not right? WTF!!! I asked him what he meant, and he repeated himself, so we went back and forth for a minute, having this completely time-wasting, no-sense-making argument. To make matters worse, the other guy in the booth comes over and asks didn't I read the sign, it's in large print, next time I should pay attention. Um, yes, thanks peanut gallery for jumping in and being so helpful. What was wrong with these guys, were they drunk? Had they had a bad day and found an easy target in me for their frustrations? Had they been wacked with the "I'm an idiot, so I must make everyone else around me feel like an idiot too" stupid stick? 

I spent the next couple of minutes trying to get these dopes past their schtick (it was like dealing with 8-year-olds), repeatedly asking if I could just go thru or if I needed to pay again, when I heard a train downstairs pulling in. They finally grew tired of berating me for not paying attention to signs and asking if they should close the "wrong" station (I'm still not understanding this line of questioning), and wave me thru, and we ran down the stairs to see the trainpulling out of the station.

So thanks to the station agents at 50th St/8th Ave downtown C/E station for being complete and utter [insert your expletive of choice here] last night and prolonging my long journey home. You suck royally.