Arriving at the railway station one morning, he found an enormous queue at the ticket machines, and after waiting a few minutes was presented with the option of missing the now-arriving train or putting his $10.10 back in his pocket, hopping on without a ticket and seeking to purchase one as soon as he arrived at the other end. You can guess how that ended: "inspectors" at the other end booked him $162 for travelling without a valid ticket.
He argued against the ticket on the grounds that
- He had clearly demonstrated an intention to buy the ticket, by virtue of having the exact change, running straight up to the counter to buy a ticket (all observed and noted by the inspector) and having a reasonable explanation for not having been able to buy the ticket at the commencement of his journey;
- He could present to the Department a pile of tickets for the trips immediately preceding and succeeding the date in question, further demonstrating that he was an honest person who buys his train tickets;
- The offence might be a "strict liability" one but it is clearly aimed at encouraging the purchase of tickets by punishing dishonest cheats, and therefore the circumstances ought to be considered "exceptional" where a transport user is able to prove, by means of a continuous series of tickets, that this demonstrably does not apply to him.
Sadly for my friend, the Department told him they didn't care and that he could pay them the money they were bullying out of him or they would, in their words as reported to me, "f*ck him up good".
So my friend - a vindictive, petty man on a minor crusade - has decided to make sure he costs the Department/Connex the $162 it has, in his angry view, unfairly taken from him. Sorry, the $151.90 - they didn't accept the $10.10 he would have paid on the day. He's going to make sure that they don't profit from their unreasonableness. They're going down for exactly $151.90 - not a penny more, not a penny less.
Of course, he isn't going to try travelling without a ticket - that would be pretty damned risky, particularly given that penalties increase for subsequent offences - but he is going to engage in a bit of civil disobedience by making sure that every ticket he travels on is handed, on the conclusion of his journey, to someone at the other end about to commence theirs, thereby costing Connex $5 or so each time. And he wants to encourage other long-standing sufferers at the hands of Connex to do likewise. It's going to be a slow, drawn-out process of revenge, and cost him much more in time than the $151.90 he's working to extract from the bottom line of his nemesis, but there's a principle at stake. An insignificant, silly, perhaps even ludicrous principle to devote that much effort to upholding, but a principle nonetheless.
After all, the Connex advertising campaigns insist that there exists a moral law they call transport karma. It does indeed, my infuriated friend argues. And those bastards are in the red.
