Punching a passenger's ticket at the gate

Only the hole was mechanised. The poinçonneur stood at the entrance and did several things at once: he validated the ticket, he saw who was coming, he answered questions, he decided when to let through a passenger whose ticket was wrong. The gate does the first of those and nothing else, and the rest was either redistributed to inspectors and station staff or simply abandoned. Paris kept the word before it kept the job, and the trade survives mostly as a song. What is not ceded is the discretion to waive a fare and the person at the window when the card fails.