"In grammar school they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fairy tale. In the university they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fact!" -Ron Carlson
I did turnstiles today for the first time. Actually did it, not just watched. I think I concentrated harder for the hour I spent there, than I did for the entire semester in school. It'd be nice and simple if there were just one kind of ticket, and one kind of membership. But there aren't. There are about a dozen different kinds of tickets, and several dozen different kinds of memberships, along with what seems like hundreds of various kinds of passes. Most of them have bar codes that must be scanned, but some passes don't, and sometimes the barcode won't scan. For that reason, everything also has a code that can be entered manually, along with codes for kids under 3 (don't neet tickets) and the re-entry hand stamp. Complicating matters is the fact that it can take the computer up to 10 seconds to let you know it's actually scanned something. That's an eternity when you've got a line of people who want to just hand you their ticket and waltz on in. All in all though, it's not too bad when people come up in ones or twos, each holding their own ticket or pass. What's really fun is when you get a big group of adults, kids and strollers and the first person hands you a stack of tickets, membership cards, guest passes, and driver's licenses (photo ID for the members), all mixed up, for the entire group. When I mentioned that to some of the more experienced VAO's, they said that's when you scan everything, add a few kids under 3 for good measure, and say to hell with it.
