Toll booth workers are lonely:
The Houston Toll Road Authority said 800,000 people travel toll roads in Harris County each day. So it’s hard to imagine that business could ever be slow for the people who work the tollbooths.
But the popularity of EZ-Tags is taking a toll on jobs.
First, came the coin machine, then the EZ-Tag. The toll taker is left alone in the booth, passed by, disregarded, marooned on the island and just maybe the loneliest people in town.
Wednesday morning, Geraldine Clark passed the time reading. This is not to say that she doesn’t get the occasional wave.
But almost no one stops and talks anymore.
“They want to pay their toll and keep on going,” said Clark.
At the outpost near Rankin Road, nearly 75 percent of the drivers have EZ-Tags. System-wide, that figure is nearly 60. That comes to more than a million people — and growing.
A few years ago, they thought those numbers were going to level off, but they didn’t.
The fact is, the EZ-Tags make it so darn easy.
“What we’re really seeing is a depersonalizations of society,” said Ed Reitman Ph.D., clinical psychologist.
Still, psychologist Ed Reitman said for some this can be the perfect job. “Every peg has its hole, I guess.”
I find it amusing that KHOU-11 goes to a couple of psychologists to interpret this trend for us — that EZ Tag users don’t want to talk to people, and toll booth workers don’t need people-skills since they increasingly don’t have to talk to people.
It sounds like a win-win.
