Filler: A few bad apples spoil it for all

Lane Filler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.

One only need look at new rules governing Long Island Rail Road tickets to see how easily the few bad folks ruin things for the many good ones.

The LIRR has announced that starting next year, its tickets, which have had a shelf life comparable to Cheez Whiz or Twinkies, will be going bad quicker than uncovered shrimp salad. One-way passes, now good for six months, will remain valid for two weeks. Ten-trip tickets, now fine for a year, will be usable for six months.

The changes are coming because people are scamming - buying a ticket and using it again and again when it doesn't get punched. The MTA says it can't afford more conductors to halt the scammers.

"We're just asking people to use tickets in the way they were bought," MTA head Jay Walder said.

Say you are a very occasional LIRR rider. You live in Mineola and purchase a round-trip ticket to attend your nephew's ice-dancing competition in Queens. Cousin Fred, who always had a weak stomach, is sickened by the combination of cold air, colder chili dogs and the heated opinions of Aunt Marge, and you offer to pilot him and his car home, as you are practically neighbors.

Now you have a return ticket on the LIRR that, under current rules, would be good for six months, but under the new, harsher code, will expire in two weeks. This is unfair - you paid for it and never used it.

Say you live in Mineola and go to Manhattan every two months to see a specialist about your "little problem." You buy 10-trip tickets, which get you through 10 months of visits and save you $10, money that can be put toward ointments and inspirational literature to address said problem.

But try this next year and your ticket will expire with several segments unused. You can get refunds on unused segments by mailing them in or taking them to the ticket office, but that's a poor replacement for being able to use them.

This is what happens when rules written to thwart scammers must be applied to all of us.

Remember when you could use the always-on gas pump to fill your tank, then go inside and pay? That worked fine until a few bad apples started driving off without ponying up.

Now when we want to pay cash for gas, we have to estimate what the tank will hold, go in and beg the glaze-eyed clerk to turn on the pump, pay, go out and jiggle the pump, go back in and beg the glaze-eyed clerk to turn on the pump we are actually parked near, pump, then if we miss our estimate, go in and see if the glaze-eyed clerk learned to make change in gum-chomping school.

All because a couple of morons did a gas and dash.

Another example: that rule in some department stores where you can only take three items into the dressing room at a time. People started stealing clothes, they didn't rehang clothes - they may well have held fancy-dress balls in there - but these days, normal people can't have a decent shopping experience.

Now, on that special day each decade that I can be coaxed into clothes-shopping, I have to tramp back and forth from the dressing room to the Broad 'n' Bulbous section of the men's department 19 times.

And the worst part is, the scammers will always manage to find a way to ride trains free, steal gas and walk out of department stores with enough stolen clothing to run a Baby Gap out of their trunk.

The rules are written to stop the bad boys, but it's only law-abiding chumps like us who obey. Outlaws couldn't care less.