As you know (or maybe you don't but you will soon), the MARTA, Atlanta's public transportation system is relatively inefficient, unreliable, and unorganized.
I caught myself one day wondering how they could possibly be so late day after day, week after week, and month after month with a new issue every day.
That's when I noticed one of their problems. Their clocks are all wrong. Click on the picture below to see it larger:
At first, you might notice the lady getting very mad at me that I'm taking her picture. More on that later... But look at the two clocks that are 5 feet apart. One says "8:04" and the other says "8:09." I don't know about you but a 5 minute difference between two clocks 5 feet apart is pretty terrible considering these are used for payments of parking, transactions, etc. This has actually caused more than one very mad person, who was trying to leave the parking lot on Thursday at 11:58pm, but Marta thought it was Friday already, and was charged for 2 days since it was "parts of two days."
(By the way, the system in Moscow was phenomenal... at least when I was there. I missed the metro many times during my eight years in Georgia.)
Anyway, I actually tracked these Marta clocks for many months and the worst it ever got was six minutes difference before someone would reset them. However, a few weeks later the same thing would occur. It was always hilarious! Well, that's pretty typical of the Marta and just the tip of their iceberg of problems.
So, now onto this lady. What happened you ask? Well, she sends out some security personnel to talk to me on the platform in front of everyone else. Very interesting.
She's says I can't take pictures of the Marta.
I respond: "Excuse me? Isn't the Marta public property? We all pay state taxes. We can take pictures of the state capitol, no? Why can't I take pictures of the Marta?"
"Well, only terrorists take pictures of the Marta."
"Oh, so now I'm a terrorist!?"
Anyway, it gets worse from there but my blood is already curdling just remembering it and since it's been at least 18 months since that day I should really just let it go...
