2013-03-11 Mon

The TTC

For me it has become a game, a sport, to collect as many different stories as possible about the yellow-stickers on monthly MetroPasses.

This latest from one of a team of three TTC employees handing out maps and information at Bloor-Yonge.

We had the initial discussion, then I tried to pin her down to a rational explanation of security and how it is improved by this measure.

Turns out it is the corner-stores and similar sales forces that are the problem.

According to the young lady, it is the devious corner stores who sell a MetroPass (with yellow sticker) to a relative or close friend and promise a 50% refund near the end of the month. As the end of the month draws near, the collaborator returns the pass, receives the 50% refund, and the dastardly merchant aims to receive a 100% refund from the TTC.

The TTC can dream up no other way of thwarting this scam than by having 100% of the law-abiding traveler litter the subway steps with adhesive yellow-stickers that, to my mind, still make no sense at all.

For "no sense" read "not sane", and for "not sane" read "insane".

Retired

I wandered into Women's College Hospital the other day.

FINALLY!

A large downtown inner-city hospital that is honest:

Check out the fourth label, right-hand side.

Haven't you ever got lost in the maze of corridors that constitute a near-century of additions and amalgamations?

Truth is WCH really does have a labyrinth (or maze) within its facilities, for spiritual and healing reasons.

While I'm at it, Toronto general Hospital has just renamed its three banks of elevators. Gone are the names "East Elevators", "West Elevators" and "South Elevators", so easy for worried families and visitors to comprehend. The banks are now named after benefactors, which makes it that much harder for people to work out how to get back to where they parked their car.

To make it worse, Toronto is laid out on a nominal north-south and east-west grid, and we all know that Elizabeth street is east of University avenue, and that Gerrard street lies south of TGH; so we locals are now somewhat inadequate in our efforts to help strangers.