City Council and the Season Ticket
— a Hungarian horror-story , translation of this post —
If I told you how I got to know all this, I’d have to kill the Dear Reader. For that reason it’s safer for all of us if you simply believe that this tale is about an existing city council. Any resemblance to reality — however improbable it may seem— is unfortunately true. The dear reader is still not completely safe; you may very well die on your own if you read this.
Absurd horror below.
At the city council (this particular one, I suppose it’s like this at other councils) employees are given BKV [Transportation Company of Budapest - transl.] season tickets. Benefit, travel-expense allowance, non-monetary compensation is what pops to mind. You’re better off that way, because if you were to think about how much the monetary compensation is, you could easily end up being hurt.
Instead of giving money for the season ticket, they buy one and hand that over to the employee. To those who deserve it. This way the council can avoid illicit use of resources, better known as cheating. Or from another perspective, rather spending it on bills.
Conversely, those who don’t deserve a season ticket sit in the office from early morning until afternoon, just like those who do deserve. The logic behind separating employees to these two categories is really something you don’t want to try and comprehend.
Therefore, there are office workers who travel along with the masses, virtually for free (from their perspective). (Please note: the very public that chose the few individuals to effectively govern itself. To help the work of these office-holders, they assigned office workers to them. Isn’t it beautiful when these people all travel together?)
Anyway, the city council must use public money —which they use to buy season tickets, for instance— wisely. To this end they use public money to hire management above ordinary office workers. They’re paid to stop ordinary office employees from wasting public resources on things that don’t serve the people. Simple as that.
Of course management is under constant supervision by top-level management, which is why they have to keep coming up with new ways and ideas to protect public money from themselves.
And that is how the new bill passed in January. It says that seasons tickets are only to be used by office workers in terms of trips required by their work. At first glance it appears to be an ingenious and very even-handed rule. It stays like that for any number of glances for those who don’t comprehend the price-structure season tickets represent. This approach tends to be drawn into a parallel with blindness by those who chose not to call it stupidity or ignorance.
I’m not sure if anyone has ever made a fair attempt at explaining a season ticket to them. Well, no-one asked me but let me try anyway:
A season ticket proves that its beneficiary has paid the fare in advance for a particular period of time instead of opting to buy tickets for each individual trip. The beneficiary of the season ticket therefore is allowed to take an unlimited number of trips during this period.
Obviously the definition is not perfect, but for all intents and purposes, it does describe a BKV season ticket perfectly. Using so called “common sense” one can deduct that the price of the season ticket is not affected by the number of trips its owner takes during the validity period.
The city council hasn’t managed to comprehend that, or if it has, it had very little effect on the process of writing the bill. The season ticket given by the council is only for trips that are necessary to get one’s work done, nothing more! For instance, that does not include getting to work. Or home. Amongst other things that’s because it would be unfair to those who belong to the category that did not deserve a season ticket. Air-tight logic, right?
And how is this brilliant rule to be enforced?
They’ve got a system worked out!
At the morning the office worker goes to work. Doesn’t matter how. Once there, they can apply for their season ticket to be given to them for the day. The employee signs a sheet, puts the document away and uses it if there is a work-related trip they need to take during the eight hours they spend in the office. No private trips allowed. After work-hours the ticket needs to be returned and signed for. Once they returned the document, they can go home. If they live close enough to their work-place, they don’t even need to buy a ticket.
Seriously.
The season ticket system now works even more efficiently and fairly than before! Good job, thanks for your selfless, enthusiastic work dedicated to saving money, etc., slow clap. And of course that means a bonus at Christmas.
