[Anonymouse]

...the one I was asked this morning at the Bolton train station takes not just the cake but the entire sweet trolley, plus a selection of liqueurs.

At some point during my shift on Wednesday night some thieving git stole my credit and debit cards, plus my Northern Rail smartcard. Result: I no longer had my weekly train ticket, nor any means of buying another - and when I was offered the Friday night shift, I only had enough cash in the house to get to work and none for the return journey. I hardly ever bother with cash any more.

But I couldn't afford to turn it down, because a) I'm still with the agency and only getting minimum wage, and b) I wanted to create a good impression with the manager of that section of Stateside by showing I'm a willing worker who can handle a 12-hour shift, because it's proper warehouse work, not all that production line nonsense, and I really want to be taken on by that section - it's work I can do. So I happily agreed to go in.

(In fact, I gather I already have made a good impression on them on the other occasions I've worked in there, and they are looking for permanent staff - my name's been put forward. Here's hoping - apart from the hourly rate of over £12, they only work 7 nights out of every 14! Result!)

So: Lack of return fare? Not to worry, I thought, I'll do that Promise To Pay thing, give 'em my details and pay as soon as I can get the cash, i.e. Monday. Simples.

Except it apparently doesn't work like that. It's not, as I'd thought, an IOU per se.

I explained why I was doing this at all. The ticket bloke asked if I was paying now. I had to pause a moment; that wasn't the question I was thinking of, but it still qualifies as stupid - if I could pay for the ticket, why was I bothering with the PTP thing? If I didn't have the cash when I got on the train, what are the chances that I'd have it when I got off? Here's a clue: numerically the probability of such an event looks like this:

0

- and the first syllable is 'ze'.

As I'm not totally antisocial, I refrained from observing that he was clearly a moron and simply said that I couldn't pay it at that time (what part of 'my cards and smartcard were stolen' wasn't clear? I'm quite sure I didn't lapse into Basque, Russian or Klingon Battle Language at any point).

Then came The Question. He asked: "Then why did you get on the train?"

He was very fortunate that I was, and am, very very tired after a 12-hour shift, else I might have given him a Pythonesque tirade along the lines of the Dead Parrot sketch. Why does anyone get on a train? Could it be, perhaps, that they might just want to, I don't know, GET TO WHERE THEY'RE GOING?!

There is, there has to be, a Moron Academy somewhere so people can study to become morons. And this is a species with aspirations towards the stars? Not a frickin' chance. I despair, I really do. This sort of thing is why I spent the whole of 1999 praying that the world would fall apart due to Y2K, because then there might have been a chance to improve things - and maybe weed out some of the idiots.

Lesson learned. From now on I will carry some cash on me. And never ever do the PTP thing again.