Toll collectors on the New Jersey Turnpike were the subject of 550 letters of complaint in 2008 and 2009, including one from a woman who was told she'd have to be cuffed and strip searched after getting in the wrong lane and another driver who was told to "get on the road and die" by an attendant after attempting to pay his toll with a $20. Numerous collectors allegedly preferred a silent attack: spitting on their fingers before handing back change.
The Smoking Gun filed a Freedom of Information Act claim to obtain the complaints, thirty pages of which can be seen here (Warning, contains many expletives!). "What kind of (expletive) comes in with a $100 bill?" asked one attendant, according to one complaint. The pages show that pennies are just as loathsome as big bills: one attendant is said to have bombarded a driver with racial slurs while throwing the copper coin back at him and threatening to call the police. One more driver complains a tollbooth collector dropped change on the ground, cursed at her then sprayed her with some something out of an aerosol can (No! Bad cat!).
"Obviously, those kinds of things make you cringe," said Franceline Ehret, a toll collector for 25 years and president of union that represents toll collectors. But, she adds, toll collectors could file some complaints of their own. "There’s a lot of road rage out there. People hate to wait in line for traffic," she said, "I’ve had people spit on money before handing it to me and making the roll (of coins) hot before they hand it to me, putting it on the heater." Some collectors have even faced the barrels of guns.
According to Turnpike spokesman Joe Orlando, no collectors have been fired over the complaints, though the attendant who offered to strip search a driver was docked for 10 days without pay. "That was about as despicable a comment as you could have heard," he said.
