One ticket, please.

It must be nice to work at a ticket office in England. You arrive in the morning at, say, nine o'clock. You open your ticket window and wait. Your first customer arrives nice and early at ten past nine and buys a ticket. You sell it to them. Behind them is another customer. They also want a ticket. You say: "Sorry mate, but everything is sold out".  Your customer is a bit surprised, not to say annoyed. "Sold out? Already? It's only ten past nine and I don't see anyone else around here." "That's right, mate, look at the sign. This is a 'ticket office'. Ticket. Singular, you see. So we only ever sell one ticket. Sorry. Try again some other day." Satisfied with your day's work, you close the counter and go home and back to bed. Who wouldn't want a job like that?

As you may have guessed, this is not how things work in England nor in other English speaking countries, so I can understand why so many Italians speak and write about a "ticketS office". In fact, I've seen this version show up at world famous heritage sites.* The thing is, "ticket office" doesn't really mean "the office of the tickets", but rather, it tells us the type of office we are talking about. Think of a swimming pool. It's not a pool full of mysterious creatures called "swimmings", is it? No, it's the kind of pool that is suitable for swimming. A racing car is a car that is good for racing, a card game is a type of game you play with cards, and a job centre is a place that finds people jobs - more than one, or so we hope. Thus, a ticket office sells tickets, you go to the post office with your letters, and the unicorn office deals with unicorns. In plural, when they can find them. Though those guys really do have an easy job.




*Guys, for a few hundred euro and bottle of good red wine, I can sort this out for you. You can find my email at the top of the page.