Duped

Wednesday, the 26th, I had tickets to the Hawks game (compliments of some long hours I have been working). Anyway, the boys, a girl from work and I headed to the game. Because of the recent tornado and construction downtown we opted to take MARTA. Upon arriving at the Doraville Station we proceeded to the machine to purchase our tokens. MARTA no longer issues tokens they have the Breeze Card...which was new to me, but nonetheless I figured we could handle it. A man, dressed like MARTA employees was standing there and asked what he needed and offered his help. We said we needed 4 round trips or 8 one-way passes. Someone mentioned we were headed to the Hawks game. He told us to follow him as he had our tickets. So he scanned us through the gate, handed me four tickets and asked for $16. My brain had already calculated the cost to be $14 but figured he was getting some handling fee. Like an idiot I paid him and in a flash he was gone.

Now, if you didn't know MARTA had Breeze Passes now then you likely don't know you have to use them to "tap" out or leave the station when you arrive. So we got to Phillips Arena and were stuck inside the MARTA station. Do you know where the machine is to buy tickets? Yep, on the other side of the gate we were stuck behind. We were in MARTA prison, forced to ride trains forever. Sure we could go anywhere the trains went, but we could never leave...it was like Hotel California of MARTA.

Fortunately a very nice MARTA policeman came along and we explained out dilemma. He laughed but let us out and told us to find him when the game ended and he'd let us back in so we didn't have to pay additional money. The Hawks won, we had a great time and got back home on MARTA without paying any more money, thanks to a couple of other MARTA employees who opened gates for us.

Although I felt like an idiot I thought it was a good lesson for the boys to realize that you can't trust everyone, but there are still people out there willing to help when you are down on your luck.