You're tansaction, like you, has been rejected

So I didn’t ‘re-fill’ my Metro OpusCard on the 30th or the 1st because the lines were a little “Waiting for Santa” if you know what I mean.

What do I mean by ‘re-fill’ my OpusCard? Here in Montréal they got away from the disposable monthly passes for Bus and Subway and now we have permanent cards that you ‘re-fill’ or charge.



You go to little Posts in any of the Metro Stations and re-charge your card, either 6, 10 or 20 individual ‘tickets’ or a Month. It’s a rather painless system where you first insert your pass and then select what you’d like to get applied to the card and then pay.

True; it’s a simple process… perhaps TOO simple because what should only take 45 seconds to a minute per person sometimes ends up being a couple minutes or as was the case for me this morning (there was only 2 people in line so I thought this was the time… oh how wrong was I)

Person #1 was in and out in the pre-described 45 seconds. (yay)

Person #2… you stupid, STUPID girl! There are 3 modes of payment:
- Credit Card
- Debit Card
- Ca$h

… Ca$h… as in those lame-ass bill feed interfaces that will only accept a Bill, freshly printed and cut, less than 5 minutes from the Mint… Have those things EVER worked for ANYTHING?!?!?! Vending Machines? Change Machines? Parking Meters?!?! No. No they have not!

And it’s not like Dumbazz was a technophobe old biddy. No. She was a young wee thing. A young spirited 20 something with firm taunt skin on her face (bitch) Did she really thing she could enter in 4 $20 recently received from an ATM to be accepted in the payment slot for her Metro pass. And WHY THE HELL?! Didn’t she just opt to pay for the card WITH her debit card. Saving that $1.00 service fee just cost you AND me what was it? 7 minutes. YES! SEVEN MINUTES!

But here’s where Karma shows her true colours (seems she doesn’t like to wait in lines either) After the eternity of bills rejected, bills re-flattened, bills finally accepted, the system went down and her transaction failed. The Teller box does not spit back out her 4 x $20… nay-nay… what it proceeded to do was spit out 40 $2 coins.

To say I was over-joyed is an understatement. As she collected her rejected life’s savings I couldn’t help but snicker. She turned and gave me a look, to which I replied. “Well maybe next time you’ll just pay with Debit or Credit and save us all time. Oh… and Merry Christmas ” (Time to take the off-ramp)