A series of unfortunate events. Warning: RATP are not out to help

7th day in Paris with the wife and it’s been an amazing trip. We heard of all these warnings from our friends about the city being dirty, pick pockets and scammers everywhere but it’s been the total opposite: the city is clean and beautiful views worthy of a picture around every corner, the people are friendly and helpful. A series of unfortunate events today just spoiled the entire mood, what could go wrong did go wrong…

The two of us and a friend were leaving Sacre Coeur to go to our lunch at Narro (which was an amazing experience btw). We entered the Abbesses metro, tapped through on our navigo easy and waited for our friend who had to buy a ticket. Wife at this time took out her phone and dropped her ticket on the ground, this was the first mistake.

After walking up the spiral staircase on our way to the station and up the hill to the basilica we took the lift down instead of the stairs and only inside did she realized she dropped her ticket. We waited to try to take the lift back up but it wouldn’t go back up with people inside. We were too tired to climb the entire spiral staircase up again and so tried the other lift, this was the second mistake.

When the lift door opened we realized we couldn’t get back to the turnstile area where she dropped her ticket. I tried to get us to go back down the stairs but wife saw people in the ratp uniform near the exit and tried to get their help. We had a wonderful experience with the ticket desk before when we had first bough our tickets at the beginning of our trip so she thought it would have been the same. But when I saw they were checking tickets, at that point I knew we were fucked. This was the third mistake.

Next thing you know it was the “meats back on the menu boys” scene from lotr. We were like moths to the flame, 4 of those officers surrounded us asking us to check our tickets and of course my wife doesn’t have a ticket. We tried explaining but no dice and had to pay the 50 euro fine. She got escorted out back to the entrance since she had to get another ticket to go to our destination. We saw her dropped ticket just behind the turnstile. We pointed this out to the officer but she didn’t give a shit. It was only a friendly passerby who helped to pass our ticket back to us. When we tried to get back into the train area the officer checked our tickets again and it showed that mine and the dropped ticket tapped into the gate at the same time but again she didn’t give a shit. We asked for a way to appeal the fine but she ignored us and told us to go, after we insisted she got her other officers to start threatening to call the police if we didn’t leave. As a tourist time is more important than money so we left with that sour taste in our mouths.

All in all it was just some real bad luck with her dropping the ticket, getting confused with the station design, and not realizing those officers were out for blood and not help. The worst part was the threatening and yelling and all round aggressive approach. Going on our way to lunch just felt like we were mugged in broad daylight.

Only reading about this now after the fact that they get paid by commissions on the fines does it all make sense. It’s really sad that this has now become the most memorable moment of our trip which was perfect until this afternoon. Instead of warning about pickpockets and scammers I’ll be warning my friends about the ratp thugs and to take an Uber instead.