The Expired Ticket

Does anyone remember the time a Monsey Bus driver would not accept a monthly ticket from a passenger because the ticket was more than two months old?
It was a morning bus to the city and folks were anxious to get going. Parnassah... and all that. So the passenger with the expired ticket sits down. The driver proceeds to take everybody else's tickets, but when it's time to go, he notes that "someone hasn't given him a ticket" (as if he doesn't know). Bus isn't moving. We're all getting a bit antsy. The passenger in question, he isn't budiging.
The debate begins as the driver explains the company's policy, looking meaningfully into his mirror. The passenger -- he's decided to play lawyer -- explains that the ticket itself doesn't set forth the company's expiration policy. He bought the ticket, not knowing of he policy and sees no reference to it anywhere (by now he's turning the ticket around like a chimp with a banana skin); he claims not to know the policy to this day and he claims a fatal lack of notice. (I'm condensing all the arguments in the interessts of time). The driver for his part, he keeps it simple: he isn't moving without the ticket, reminding all he world that if the company doesn't get the right number of tickets, the difference comes out of his pocket. (An argument I've always found convincing since, let's face it, the drivers aren't getting rich, so why ake it out n them?)
Meanwhile, all us passengers are starting to twitch and some words are spoken, not kind ones, but mumbled imprecations having to do with what sort of passenger would do this t his fellow wage-slaves. A young woman (Stern College if my eyes do not deceive me) tells the passenger in the sweetest voice he "is so wrong." More grumbling.
Finally, another passenger, a man with his own law practice, goes to the driver and gives the driver a ticket for the passenger who has not relented from his shaky legal position.
The driver takes us all to Manhattan.
Just before the passenger gets off, he delivers himself of his short speech to the effect that it is the driver who is in the wrong. Passenger explains that the driver "had no right to embarass me." The passenger then produces a valid taicket fromhis pocket (like the magician who has the dove in his pocket all along). The passenger shows the ticket to the driver. (Where do people like this gestate? Under some rock?) Passenger debarks with a flouris. He seems to think he has prvoed some sort of point. But what?
I use this story -- all true-- to illustrate the concept of sense of entitlement.
But the moment that stays in my memory most of all is that when the generous (or was he merely an enraged) man got up to pay for the seat with a valid ticket, the troublemaker smirked. When he did it, I didn't understand, but in retrospect it was the smirk that said it all.