PLIGHT OF A TTE
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The journey last night was the usual sunday night Bangalore Cantonment to Chennai central by 12658 Chennai Mail. Arriving the station as usual by a MERU taxi and having the Badam milk in ther Nandhini Milk Outlet.. i headed to PF 2. Kongu Arrived with its MLY SHAKTI Twins at 10.30pm on PF 1 followed by SSPN-MAS Weekend express around 10.45 pm running almost 30 mins late. SSPN express always reminds me or closely resembles me for the fact that we both are weekend visitors to Bangalore :-)....
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Moving on to the action on PF2 was 11013 LTT-CBE Express which arrived as usual late to BNC with its GOC WDG4. This blocked the way for my train and finally my train arrived around 23:00 hrs late by 10 mins.
Occupied my seat in S7 along with my regular traveling friends. The story all begins here.. The man of highlight the TTE now came to check the tickets. He was a confused soul with the EFT stuff giving him nightmares. To add fuel to the fire i told you are going to do this for atleast next 2 - 3 months as the railway budget will hike the fares again. He instantly cursed IR top notches with @#$%^** ....
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Well he was in no mood to check ID cards i believe and he asked me who all came in my group and who did not and gave me the chart and asked me circle the people who came and put a slash against the NJ and mark that NJ. It was awesome i am stepping into the shoes of a TTE now. Disaster struck for a moment when a lady came to him and said someone else is claiming that seat no 23 is hers. The TTE asked the lady's name and checked the chart to find that 23 is not her seat and he had already checked the ticket and happily circled it. The usual scene i thought.. The lady boarded the wrong train.. well not she has boarded the correct train just that her seat was 20 and not 23... The TTE gave his heartful to her and then she was trying to justify her act.. our man now said
" I am already confused please dont stay here to confuse me more and go and sleep.. Good Night " :-D. I happily ticket everything and then he said how much is the EFT you have to pay.. So i calculated for him and told him and he suddenly took all the money he had collected and gave it to me and said." Can you help me collect the EFT". I first arranged the money denominations wise and then along with him collected all the fares for the enitre coach. To reduce the burden, what we did was to club two or 3 PNR of the same cubicle and issue one EFT so that he doesnt need to write more ;). The last duty i performed was to clear the RAC in my coach. Since 2 people in my group did not turn up i told him if i can allocate the berth to the RAC and he happily agreed.. He thanked me and proceeded for his duty in other coaches.
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I felt so very contended coz even after writing RRB for 13 times i never could get my dream job into the railways.
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Thanks for your patient reading.