... are on my mind. Last week, I got onto the Mass Pike and they had attendants handing out toll tickets. I thought that the job of dispensing toll tickets had been automated everywhere by now.
Yesterday, I read an obituary of a New Hampshire resident I had vaguely known 40 years ago, and it said that after he had worked as a mechanical engineer for 25 years, he worked the next decade as a toll booth attendant.
I also sometimes recognize another New Hampshire toll booth attendant who I went to school with many years ago. I've never spoken to him during any of the half dozen times he took my toll. I've been concerned that he might be embarrassed at having to work such a menial job after having gotten a bachelor's degree himself.
Maybe I shouldn't feel sorry for him. Maybe he makes more than I do. Does anyone know what New Hampshire toll booth attendants earn?
http://www.ehow.com/info_10043689_new-hampshire-toll-booth-salaries.html
Thanks.
I feel sorry for people entering the world of work today. In constant dollars, a toll booth job pays half to two-thirds of what a high school graduate could make if he had just walked into Davidson Rubber in the 1970s and gotten an unskilled, piecework job, but as far as I know, such state jobs only go to people who "know someone".