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When motorists don’t have money for the toll, Beutel hands them numbered manila envelopes (postage required), tells them they have 10 days to pay, and jots down their license-plate numbers. Today, more people than usual don’t have the cash; Beutel exhausts her supply of envelopes and has to call on an intercom for someone to bring her more. One ponytailed woman in a truck with New Hampshire plates freaks out when she realizes she doesn’t have the three bucks. "Ohmygod! Ohmygod! I’m soooooo sorry! Imsosorry! Imsosorry!" She’s practically hyperventilating.

"That’s okay," says Beutel, scribbling down the vehicle’s plate number and handing her a yellow packet. "Things happen."

In the course of a workday, Beutel chats with close to 1000 people. The repetitive chitchat, to me, is one of the most maddening aspects of this job. Interpersonal interactions span between four and 10 seconds and are rarely even three or four sentences. Nothing is particularly memorable — everyone’s just trading clichés. By comparison, the five-minute contact between cashier and customer at McDonald’s seems downright intimate.

But Beutel doesn’t seem to mind. "I say ‘Good morning’ a thousand times," she giggles, slipping bills into a slot in her cash drawer. "But I like it. I really do."

during their shifts, when they’re not in their booths, toll collectors are confined to the Tobin’s dingy, bleak administrative building. The collectors’ union contract guarantees them two 30-minute breaks and one 45-minute break in an eight-hour shift — twice as much as most retail-store employees get. It may seem indulgent, but these are the only opportunities to use the bathroom (exceptions are made for emergencies), and breaks are precisely measured — and include the minutes spent crossing Route 1 and descending a few floors to the lunch room, nicknamed the "rec room." A toll collector doesn’t have time to run errands or a place to take a walk. There’s no sandwich shop to grab a freshly made sub, no convenience store to pick up some aspirin. There are just cars and trucks. Lots and lots of them.

And the rec room. It’s a dismal place — a dentist’s chair is more inviting. There’s a long rectangular table in the center of the room, a cruddy coffeemaker in the corner, a blank chalkboard on one wall. A television, pushed back against another wall and adjacent to Massachusetts and American flags, is always on. The carpet is torn in places. There are holes in the walls. Bird shit streaks the windows, though there’s really nothing to see anyway. Look up and there’s Route 1’s pea-green underbelly; look down and there’s a parking lot.

After stopping in a messy women’s bathroom with lockers and another TV that’s always on, Beutel retires to the rec room to watch television, drink coffee, and eat her one-yogurt lunch. People wander in and out as their breaks overlap. The room’s discussions aren’t much lengthier than those in the tollbooths, most about television, weather, sports, salacious local news.

Beutel’s family escaped from East Germany to Austria in 1949. She left Europe in 1963, first moving to New York, then to Boston. By avocation, Beutel is a dressmaker. ("I made clothes for [CBS-4 news anchor] Liz Walker!" she boasts.) After the birth of a son and a divorce, she was hired at a McDonald’s in Winthrop, manning the drive-through and "working on my English." After eight years filling fast-food orders, Beutel applied for a job at Northwest Airlines in customer service. (She was at McDonald’s when she found out she’d landed the position and was so excited she forgot to give a regular customer his habitual Quarter Pounder.) Northwest led her to Massport, where she worked in a garage for five years. In 2000, she transferred to the Tobin Bridge. Toll collecting, she says, is better than overseeing a parking garage. "You are really in the cold in the garage."

Beutel’s a model employee. In her 10 years at Massport, she’s called in sick only four times. She rises at 3:15 a.m. to get here at five — though she’s usually in the building by 4:30. Of the 5 a.m.–to–1 p.m. shift, Beutel says, "You have to be an early bird, you have to like to go. And I do."

we’re Back in the booth at 10 a.m., but it feels like four in the afternoon. Still, Beutel is irrepressibly cheery.

I, on the other hand, am bored. Really bored. I watch the clock on Beutel’s monitor, praying time will pass quickly. What makes me most uncomfortable is that there’s no sense of accomplishment in this job, no completion of a task. You’re a good employee if you show up on time, don’t dally, don’t short the drawer, don’t watch television. I slaved at McDonald’s for three years and unloaded trucks one whole summer, and I’d rather do either of those jobs than this one.

Which is why, when one of Beutel’s co-workers stops at her booth to ask if she’d be willing to put in overtime tonight, I’m surprised to hear her accept a 9 p.m.–to–5 a.m. shift, starting in less than 12 hours. "I have tomorrow off, so it’s okay," she says. "I’ll bring my knitting because it’ll be slow."

At around 11 a.m., a driver in a red coat pulls up. "You’re the nicest one I’ve talked to," she tells Beutel.

"You heard that?" Beutel asks me. "Now write that down!"

Camille Dodero can be reached at cdodero[a]phx.com