SeanH525

The starting rate is about $22-$23 an hour if I’m not mistaken.

We’re able to call for NYPD, EMS, FDNY, etc. There is a system in the booth specifically made for that. I’d say besides customer service it is our primary responsibility without fares being handled in the booth. As for the larger topic at hand… as it stands we’re probably short almost 200 agents compared to last year. Station CTAs are a position of need too. It might just be the new normal with transit. I don’t know that they’re looking to add. Although if I’m being completely objective, having a full strength CTA roster is very important down here. More important than adding new agents, when they could just get rid of lunches to address the crazy overtime (as they originally planned). They shouldn’t be twiddling their thumbs with CTA hiring, though. And the union is not being forthcoming about the fares/cash in the booth issue. It was known and even discussed in the news that the implementation of OMNY was going to phase handling fares out of the booths years ago. The timeline just ticked up because of COVID. We’ll see what comes of this Velazquez bill, but I’m not too concerned about job security either way. They’ve been chiseling at this job title for years through attrition. The Great Recession was the only exception.

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-velazquez-mta-cash-booths-bill-20210629-4ow5to6s5nfuzc2tzabfsv5lje-story.html

I think that’s the plan eventually. I had someone at my booth earlier this week that had a start date and an offer sheet though. Before that, my head was exactly where yours was about it lol

I have a good feeling they’ll be hiring soon to fill vacancies. Between retirements, covid deaths, and the influx of cash they’ve received from the federal government, I’d say it’s coming sooner rather than later. Hold tight.

If all of the MVMs are not accepting bills, and that’s the only form of payment you have, supervision has said to let customers through the service gate.

Thank you for taking the time to read and responding back as well. I have no job without you guys. My father before me as well.

Fair enough. I don’t feel it serves either of us to continue to bicker. If you truly do advocate to save jobs, then I was wrong to judge you as I did. I hope one day you are able to go to a booth and you have a different experience. It’s in all not a difficult job. Because of that, and in fairness to you as a rider, there’s no need for any agent to be rude to the riding public. It’s a privilege to do what we do, especially these days.

It’s ironic to read you trying to lecture me on a nasty attitude when you clearly lack any and all empathy. If you want to take my defending people as me being “nasty”, I’m not sure what else there is to say to you. We’re all painfully aware of the financial straits many state and local agencies are facing due to COVID. I’m more than aware especially that NYCT is anything but exempt in that regard. The public should back the agents. We want to be serving you, not having to answer for the decisions made at 2 Broadway and 130 Livingston about what parts of our job description we are and are not able to perform. There’s nothing I’d rather do more than be able to accept payment for your fare, especially over having to defend my right to future employment. I’m sorry for whatever experiences you may have had in the past with others performing the same profession. I am not rude; I am simply tired of having to defend the job I perform to the best of my ability on a weekly basis. It’s hard to come on here every so often and see us being put down or trivialized when we simply cannot make the call to do what we signed up to do.

Sure, you didn’t push for anyone to lose their job... Except your little soliloquy generalizing nearly 3,000 people before I chimed in. I’m not sure why it’s so hard for you to admit that you’re being not at all objective about this, but okay. And as I said previously to someone else, there was a plan for the future of the station agent position before the covid outbreak. The Wayfinder program was agreed upon by NYCT and TWU before we ever got into the Covid mess. If you want to speculate and assume that’s off the table simply because you have something against the people who do the job, that’s fine. Just say that instead of talking out of your you know what. I’m glad you’re such a big advocate for the system or whatever your obsession with this forum is, but it really is shameful to wish bad on others simply because you don’t agree (?) that the job they do is essential or worth the pay. Or whatever the hell your problem is. MVMs were not designed to handle the amount of volume they’ve been tasked with after cash transactions were suspended at the booths. This is why, as I stated before, people are often given free entry via the service gate. If there’s no way to pay in cash, and customers only have cash to use, they have to have a way to enter the system. I really take no enjoyment out of shooting down your talking points, so I’d appreciate it if you at least tried to educate yourself more about what it is we’re there to do before putting us all down. I don’t have kids, but many of my colleagues do. And it’s beyond me that you’d be so callous about them earning a living because they aren’t “useful” to you.

Lmao you literally have no idea what you’re talking about. There are more people that want to use cash in the subway than you evidently know. Way more. This is just biased dribble from someone whose political affiliation absolutely does matter. Your arrogance, condescension and sense of entitlement screams what you believe. Maybe if you didn’t so strongly push for people to lose their jobs, and the “change” part was where you were coming from, you wouldn’t come off as such a... well you know.

You know what they say about opinions. And I’m certainly glad your opinion doesn’t dictate what happens with my occupation or dozens of others that I know. I’m not surprised where you stand given your standing in many other topics that I’ve seen here. An entitled Trumper through and through. I pray what you wish on others isn’t what you deal with in your life.

I appreciate your objectivity. It’s true that transit is terrible with their habit of wasteful spending. However, there was a plan in place long before COVID for the future of the station agent position (Wayfinder). I highly doubt the approximately 2700 people that perform the job will be laid off regardless of the financial situation. The move to cut lunch relief jobs is more than likely to address the current OT situation, for example. Wasteful spending and unnecessary amounts of OT work go hand in hand. If you downsize the amount of necessary agents, you don’t have to fill future or current vacancies with new agents or excessive OT. It’s a good move to combat the wasteful spending you’re talking about. It also avoids layoffs, since there’s already an agent shortage. All the move will do is dramatically decrease overtime. When retirements come, future job picks could simply reflect a reduced head account once again. Downsizing via attrition makes a lot more sense than spitting in the faces of people who worked through a pandemic.

Transit can’t lay anyone off so long as they continue to rely on federal stimulus aid. With that being said, pretty rude of YOU to assume all station agents are the same. Then there’s the loss of livelihood that you’re so casually discussing. No one’s fault but transit themselves that they’re gaming the system to short their fare revenue/swipes. When the machines are down (which they are regularly for long periods of the day), and customers claim they only have cash as payment, they’re let through the service gate for free. That is what we are told to do. The problem is they now haven’t swiped, and the swipes are what transit uses to account for their “ridership numbers”. There isn’t one station agent I know that doesn’t want to be performing their primary job function. Not our fault that NYCT decided to neuter us to help themselves cry broke.

I’m deeply sorry to anyone on this list waiting to get hired. Not only is there currently a hiring freeze, but the pick books for winter 2021 released indicate there will undoubtedly be 100’s of job cuts to this position. The layoffs will ensure that no one is called off of this list for a long time...