TollBoothGuy
5 Years Experience
Brooklyn, NY
Male, 33
I spent just short of five years as a toll collector on the western end of New York State. Ask me anything, but please don't pay me in pennies.
Congratulations! Full-time work in this field is good if you can get it. Happy to hear that you've been able to work your way up to it!
Thank you so much for your kind words. I hope that I have been able to give people an accurate insight into a day in the life. At this point, you're probably more qualified than I to be answering questions about the job. I've come across so many people whose eyes light up when I tell them I used to be a collector. It just seems to be one of those mysterious jobs people wonder about and I hope I've been able to convey that we're just people standing in metal boxes in the middle of a big road(with some good stories).
People are terrible. But sometimes they're okay. And that's enough for me to keep showing up everyday. Good luck out there brother.
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My experience did not actually include an oral exam; more of a regular job interview. I could speculate as to the content but I wouldn't want to point you in the wrong direction. If you passed the written exam I'm sure you'll do fine. Good luck!
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And when the adults say that...
well, it's going to be a long day.
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Hi Caitlin. Without knowing you personally or what your goals might be it's hard to say whether a part-time toll collector job would be right for you. Some general notes:
My part-time rate was one of the better rates you could get in my region without technical skills/experience.
If you do not enjoy working with the public, DO NOT apply for this job. Conversely, if you do like talking to people you will have the opportunity to do so. (Though they may not always have the nicest things to say to you.)
Part-time work on a toll road for me meant taking a lot of hours around full-timers and those part-timers that restricted their schedules into very specific hours. This meant that there was a lot of inconsistency in my schedule month-to-month. Since I was willing to work overnights I was able to get a quite a few eight-hour shifts, with the caveat being I had to work from 11p - 7a with some frequency. Remember that toll roads don't close so the hours can be difficult.
Money is dirty, and toll plazas can be loud places,
If you feel that large amounts of change might make your irrationally angry, this might be a job that you want to avoid.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Good luck!
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Thankfully I was never the target of an attempted robbery. It's something you hear about occasionally, but I'm happy to say that it seems relatively rare.
Cursed out? Sure. Nobody likes waiting in line to pay a toll. Toll collectors don't love standing in metal boxes for hours on end taking dirty money from people that don't want to hand it over to begin with. It's a combustible situation. I tried my best to not take it personally. It's not easy.
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Gabriella, unfortunately I can't give you a better answer than maybe, maybe not. I've never had experience working in a system that employed exact change lanes so I can't speak to what happens when things go awry. If you do get some sort of ticket, I'd find a way to protest it since you sincerely tried to pay the toll, but hopefully you won't hear anything at all. Good luck!
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The only thing I can really recall is having to make change on the spot without the use of a calculator. (We didn't have cash registers in the booth) so you need to be able to calculate change that drivers are owed on your own. There were some other scenario-based questions, I suppose, and general inquiries about customer service experience. There is often a civil service exam somewhere in the process and that often serves as the basis for the job. (If you can pass the test, you can probably do the job. I got the sense that the interview was primarily to confirm the results of the test. Again, I'm sure other collectors have different experiences.)
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