One way to find out if you're an Honored Citizen

The fare inspectors wait at the Hollywood transit center every evening now. I heard them tell someone tonight that they’re there till one o’clock in the morning, or maybe it was two. They wait at the bottom of the stairs and stop everyone. There’s no other way out of there other than to step down onto the tracks and walk along them out the other end, with no space to jump aside when the train comes.

The woman in front of me handed over her ticket. The other inspector was dealing with another customer, while this inspector, a large man in his fifties, his uniform enhanced with blinking Christmas lights, very respectfully asked, “OK, and can I see your Honored Citizen ID, please? She must've pressed the button for Honored Citizen on the ticket vending machine, which must be the current euphemism for old person. She was about twenty seven. Nice try, hon. The inspector got on his radio and hollered her name and details over to someone else, I guess to check if she’d done this before. Then he told her, “OK, Jessica, this time I’m going to write you a warning. But if it happens again, that’ll be a ninety four dollar ticket.”