ORCA, take n

RantWoman has been doing so well (NOT!) about electronic interface to her spiffy new ORCA card that this morning in the middle of the rest of the world getting their bus passes the last week of the month RantWoman bounded down to the Metro office to get her next month's pass in person.

RantWoman originally thought of doing this Friday. Thanks to the wisdom of the global economic collapse, the bottom falling out of sales tax collections, and massive governmental deficits, the humble public servants in transit offices were forced to endure Furlough Friday, another unbearable day of leisure tacked onto an already 3-day weekend. RantWoman is sure they were suffering miserably; if they weren't RantWoman will go find some nice statistics about how leisure improves productivity. Everyone in Europe who takes much more vacation than people in the US do is also much more productive. That would kill the vacation buzz since the workers would just be storing up zeal for their return to work, but tough.

Or RantWoman would just show up in person on the first workday after a holiday and reserve judgment about productivity. When RantWoman arrived there was quite a line. RantWoman fretted about needing to leave in time to bus to an appointment. RantWoman took note of a cheery video loop in one corner touting all the wonders of the ORCA card and scanned briefly for evidence that maybe she could just find a machine near the video screen, inser her ORCA card in one place and her bank card in another and process the transaction that way. No dice. Considering RantWoman's experiences with touch-screen interfaces, perhaps she was silly even to harbor hopes in that regard anyway.

RantWoman pondered the line's initial glacial movements and detected several people having customer service moments in various languages. Thwack was at work and RantWoman thought of a story she heard about a blind person having customer service moments and then on his way out (inadvertantly?) demolishing the lovely ribbon and stantion line guides: RantWoman has successfully navigated these several times so she figured unfortunately that it might be hard to claim any lapses were a complete accident.

The line picked up and RantWoman decided just to tough it out. She arrived at the counter, inserted her card as requested in some green thingie, proffered her bank card, entered her PIN with the LOVELY tactile device provided, and once again asked the human about her problems registering her card online. This human made a completely different assertion from RantWoman's two previous respondents: this person said the ORCA site is supposed to ask RantWoman whether the card is already registered. RantWoman came home and almost ahead of her news fix signed in and looked again. Ummmm. No. Not that either.

Now why is it RantWoman usually has a "let someone else beta test" rule?