Information is power mingled with poisonous politeness

This day started out really great; I woke up to the familiar "I wonder where I am" feeling to realize with delight that I'm in Turlock visiting Charlie Mae, things get better and better as I'm invited out to breakfast by Lisa, Charlie's Ohma. After that I have the rare pleasure of a long bike ride on nephew Colter's 21 speed Schwinn city bike. But. All good things must come to an end, and Colter drives me to the Turlock-Denair Amtrak station. The train is late because of work on the tracks (the result of a train derailment last night). Nevermind, Colter and I have things to talk about. We could talk all night, but the train arrives, I try to crack his ribs as we say goodbye and climb aboard. It's a beautiful ride, especially when we get into the San Francisco Bay Area on this bright and glorious sunny day. My ticket is as far as Richmond. The Richmond station you see is cleverly also a BART station; take the elevator down, and life continues at a lower level. I have two BART tickets in my pocket; one has $1.40 on it, so I can't use it. Help is always available, so I naively go to get help from a real person in the kiosk whose native language is English. So she feigns friendliness, but condescendingly tells me that I have to have $1.50 on the ticket to get in, so go to the machines behind me to add a dime. I docilely obey, but my ticket is rejected as invalid. I patiently return to the help window (by now I feel like like a pixel in Microsoft). I ask for help; the lady, sick of my interruptions impatiently grabs my ticket to scan it, she manages to do this in such a suspicious manner that I begin to suspect that my ticket is indeed invalid. Oh! She throws it back at me, it's all ok, "just go put a dime on it" she smiles, (looks just like a snarl). By now I begin to get my own ideas of how this could work in the free, open source world, "but the ADDFARE machines are inside", I protest. "I'm aware of those machines" she politely snipes, "but you can't get in unless you can add 10 cents to your ticket with those machines over there", so I go back. (by the way I have luggage too, a suitcase, a laptop and an attaché case) this time I see I had tried to put the ticket into the slot for money, so now I wisely try to shove it into the ticket ejector slot - doesn't work. I go back to the professional in the information booth, by now she and her boyfriend are heartily sick of my constant interruptions. I give her my ticket needlessly explaining that I can't put more money on it with those evil machines. "Give me your ticket" she sounds dangerous by now, but I'm still naïve enough to think she will leave the comfort of her cozy cubicle to show me what I'm doing wrong. Well better yet she gives me the $1.40 in cash! By now I know I've spent way too much time there so I pull out my other BART ticket and run it through the gate and I'm in and wheeling my bags to the escalator. But wait! I hear a by now familiar voice yelling! I turn to look to see if I've broken something in my wake, but no - it's the minimum wage employee who's crept out of her cubicle to yell at me for not going to buy a new ticket! I call back my deep thankyous and head upstairs. I kept my 2 cents to myself. At the top of the stairs I found 4 pennies. Now I'm 6 cents richer.