TollBoothGuy
5 Years Experience
Brooklyn, NY
Male, 33
I spent just short of five years as a toll collector on the western end of New York State. Ask me anything, but please don't pay me in pennies.
I always found toll collecting and reading/studying to be a dreadful combination. As soon as you pick up your book and read a line, voila- a car appears! Put the book down, handle the customer, pick the book back up, read the same line over again, put the book down for another customer, rinse, repeat.
At slow times, this may not be the scenario, but slow times are generally early mornings, late evenings, and overnight hours. Not optimal times for consuming content that will need to be retained.
Everyone is different, of course, and you may be able to study in this environment but I had a difficult time of it.
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When I was working out there part-time, I only traveled the Thruway for free when I was going to or coming from work. Otherwise, I had to pay like everybody else. Full-timers did get to travel the Thruway for free. If you ever see a vehicle with an orange EZ-Pass tag inside of it, that's probably a current or former Thruway employee. I can't speak as to whether that particular perk is still issued to collectors that are hired full-time presently, but there are definitely still employees out there utilizing it. Full-timers also had some options that many state employees enjoy, like going back to school for little/no cost. (though we are not state employees) Part-timers had small incentives that rewarded them for working a certain amount of hours per week/moth. Other than that, we had to settle for the satisfaction of getting to interface with the toll-paying public for eight hours at a time.
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Honestly, your chances of getting a full-time position are beyond miniscule. When the rare full-time opportunity does come along, your lack of seniority would immediately disqualify you. In the five years I was employed there, I couldn't even sniff anything resembling the chance of full-time employment. In fact, I worked with part-timers who had been working with the authority for well over a decade who would have been open to full-time employment if it had been available. Part of this was their reluctance to relocate to other parts of the state and work undesirable shifts(overnights). More constraining though, is the challenging fiscasl situation that agencies like the NYS Thruway find themselves in. Costs are ballooning and a big reason for that is salaries of and obligations to full-time employees. The NYS Thruway Authority cut 234 jobs just this year so I doubt they're looking to take on many(if any) full-timers.
Now if you're looking to work downstate, the work will be more plentiful, and you might have a better shot at full-time employment sometime in the relatively distant future. You also might have the opportunity to work with a different agency such as the Port Authority or the MTA.
For example, I did a little bit of searching and came up with this:
MTA Job Listing
As for the Thruway Authority, keep an eye out on civil service listings for New York State. If you're interested in relocating at some point, a good way to start would be to come up and take the toll collector exam the next time it is offered in in the state. It's not given with any predictable regularity, so I can't really give you a whole lot more guidance than that. Good luck!
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The exam that I took had three sections. The first was vehicle classification, consisting of pictures of a variety of combinations. Tolls often vary by type of vehicle, and collectors are audited, so being able to classify and charge the appropriate toll is critical to the job. The second section consisted of adding up money that was printed on the page. (Which I found substantially more difficult than actually having real money in front of me to pick up and count.) The third section consisted of totaling up deposit slips.
I'm sure different exams vary from agency to agency.
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Varies. I can only speak from my experience. When I started I was in the 9 dollar range. By the time I left nearly five years later I believe I was up to the 13-14 dollar range.
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I suppose it depends on the situation and the agency. If the collector can be identified, it is reasonably certain that they will be addressed by a supervisor. I can't speak for what kinds of penalties ensue, but I would guess that they are largely based on the type of complaint combined with the work record of the collector.
Here's the thing about the situation that you describe though. Once an EZPass tag registers when a car is passing through a lane, it can't be reversed. If the collector had taken your money, you would have been charged the toll a second time. Additonally, the collector's drawer would be over by the amount of your cash toll. (Which does no harm to her, but is your money and should not go to her drawer.) I understand that you had no intention of paying with the rental's EZPass tag, but sometimes they do go off accidentally. (Often, they'll be in those enclosed boxes on the windshield which generally prevent them from being read. These boxes don't work 100% of the time though.) I would take whatever toll charges you see on your bill up with the rental company, and see if they would be willing to reimburse you.
If she didn't attempt to clearly explain what was happening, that's unfortunate, but it sounds to me like she was following the correct protocol.
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Part-timers like myself had the ability to set our own availabilities. Outside of holidays, we could make ourselves as available for as few or as many days as we wanted. I guess the only caveat to that is that the days that we made ourselves available didn't automatically translate into shifts. So you could make yourself available for weekends only, but there would be a high likelihood that you wouldn't work all weekend days.
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