The ticketer walked from seat to seat on the train, as he did after every stop, checking the seats for people who had gotten off and people who had gotten on, asking to see tickets to make sure there weren't any freeloaders and deadbeats trying to cheat the system. His face was a mask of emotionlessness, mechanically moving from seat to seat, checking the passengers and their tickets, thanking people for their business, then advancing onto the next set of seats to do the same. He had worked on this train, the A-Line 317, for over twenty five years. It didn't pay well, and it wasn't exciting, but he had a lot of free time, got to see some fantastic sights on the journey, and had a cheap way to take vacations with his family on his free days thanks to the company discount.
There were a few regulars in the early and late hours who would make conversation with him. He'd smile at them, offer a word or two of recognition, but always faithfully move on before getting too invested in a conversation. It wasn't that he didn't want to become friends with some of the passengers, nor did he think that he didn't have the time to stop and have a chat every now and again. But he was a man dedicated to his work - he believed in a functional train with a functional staff that got the job done smoothly and efficiently. And being efficient didn't always allow for being nice.
On the train that day was a younger man, somewhere in his early twenties, and it was clear that he was pretty new to this system of travel, and to being generally in public. The ticketer had seen young men like him before. Young men who had gotten cocky in some or another and lost access to the form of transport that they were more used to - usually a car. But despite that, they still had a chip on their shoulder, and didn't want to be associated with what they saw as the riff-raff that were more accustomed to taking the train. He was in one of the seats in the back by himself, with some rear-facing seats across from him that he was using to rest his feet on.
"No feet on the seats please, sir," the ticketer said as he approached. The man scoffed at him but pulled his feet down, but the look in his eyes said they were going back up as soon as the ticketer's back was turned. "Ticket, please," he spoke again, and the man fished around in his back pocket to grab the ticket. It was wrinkled and difficult to scan, seeing as the man had hastily shoved it into his pockets when running out the door to catch the train, not wanting to be caught with such a sign of weakness. The ticketer got it into the system though and moved on. "Feet," he called as he walked past.
"Why don't you just do your job?" the man jeered angrily.
For the first time in a long time, the ticketer looked back at a passenger he had already ticketed and paused to look at him. The man was grumpy, slumped into his seat, arms crossed, trying to hide himself. A bag at his feet, and another in the cargo bay over his head. A man with places to be, it seemed, and either a dislike for having to get there, or a lack of patience and a desire to get there faster than the train could allow.
"This is my job," the ticketer replied calmly. "Please remember to keep your feet down. It's quite rude to the next guest who takes that seat, don't you think? I should hope that the last person to sit in there didn't have their shoes up on your seat. Who knows what they had been walking through."
He walked away with the young man squirming in disgust at the thought the ticketer had planted in his head.
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