BUREAUCRATIC HORRORS: I - BUYING A TICKET FROM VIA RAIL

We went to Toronto's Union Station to book a train ticket from Montreal to Toronto with a 2-hour stopover in Brockville where we have planned to lunch with a friend from the UK who is only briefly in Canada during Eastertide. Stopovers cannot be purchased on line. Why this should be so is a mystery, given what unfolded.

The very pleasant agent insisted that stopovers were only allowed on full fare tickets. We told her that we knew that wasn't the case. She bent over her her computer, and summoned another agent to consult and help, and we went back and forth FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES - poor dear, so under-trained, and so confused, yet she was very "experienced" - she also said, incredibly, that we were the first stopover "I have EVER had in fifteen years..." She could not understand that the computer was putting out the second lowest fare $116 for the itinerary requested - "it can't be right; you should be paying $189."

Finally, with much laughter (fortunately, we were in no hurry and had kept teasing her as "Myrna the Via Rail revenue Maximizer" which further confused her - "what's a maximizer ?") she read from her screen a VIA policy statement to agents dating from sometime last year in which the Gods of VIA decreed that the revenue enhancement from breaking fares with stopovers rather than allowing through fares was so minimal, and the agent confusion and time-wasting from attempting to sort through the rules so widespread (QED), that henceforth most itineraries would be okayed for through fares, and so indicated on the agent's screen by an asterisk in column such-and-such.

"Oh, I WONDERED what that little star was doing there all the time," said our new BBBFF Mryna - "I guess they like you." And so, with 10 people in line behind me, the computer spat out my ticket. Smiles from Myrna. Smiles from the other agent who had ignored his window for 12 of the 15 minutes. Smiles from us. And so our lunch in Brockville can eventuate, all the sweeter knowing VIA has got "only" $116 from us rather than $189. Should pay for a pub lunch for two ?