When SEPTA is like Kafka

As a New Yorker who relies on the subway every day, I'm accustomed to filth, odors, and unexplained lapses in service. But no amount of Big Apple grit or inefficiency could prepare me for the torturous exercise of purchasing a subway token from SEPTA.

It's 8:30 a.m. I'm at a station on the Market-Frankford Line, and I approach the window of what looks very much like a token booth. As I'm slipping my only cash, a $20 bill, under the slot, the guy in the booth shakes his head and says, "I don't make change."

He directs me over a set of stairs to the other side of the station. I don't quite understand why I can't buy a token, but I have to get to 30th Street Station, and I have no time for questions.

At Booth No. 2, the mere sight of my $20 bill prompts a SEPTA employee to bark at me, "I don't make change!" She then rattles off the directions to the station's alleged change-making center. She speaks so quickly that I have to ask her to say it again. She repeats the directions loudly and slowly.

Outrage wells up in me. I say, "Why don't you make change?" At that point, she looks me in the eye and unleashes the ultimate Plexiglass power move: clicking off the intercom. I'm dead to her. I say something about how ridiculous this system is, but now I'm just a lip-flapping maniac on mute.

I trudge through a set of doors to Booth No. 3, getting farther and farther away from the actual platform. My endurance is waning, and 30th Street Station might as well be Outer Mongolia. I hear trains rumbling through the station, any number of which I could be on if I had a token. Or exact change.

I wait with all the other cast-out change-seekers, and by the time I get to the third window my mood can best be described as nuclear.

I. Would. Like. One. Token. Please.

"I can't sell you one token. I can give you change, and you can go buy a single token from the machine." The machine? I'm stunned. I search the token lady's eyes for an explanation.

"I can only sell you two tokens," she says.

I don't live in Philadelphia, so I don't need two tokens. I need one token. But, after being silenced at the previous booth, I don't dare say this aloud.

Instead, I fold. SEPTA has broken me. I will pay for two tokens for the subway of a city I don't live in.

I off-load the $20 albatross. The woman slides my change under the window, along with a little plastic bag containing two tokens. What is this? I wonder as I look down at the little baggie. Sanitized tokens?

Which brings me to another point. For the love of God, it's 2010. Why is this city still using tokens? And why are there people in booths who don't sell the damn things? Is the mail in Philadelphia delivered by carrier pigeons?

None of these questions will be answered. So I take my baggie and step away from the window. The plastic bag is industrial-strength, so I stand there in the station tearing into it with my teeth while trying not to spill coffee on myself. Officially humiliated and holding my precious SEPTA token in a death grip, I head for the turnstiles.