We've all been there: a peak hour tram pulls up at a crowded CBD stop and everybody heads for the doors, only to be held up by that annoying traveller who insists on touching off before they alight – as the crowd of people trying to get on becomes a suddenly angry mob.

And that moment between the Myki touching the reader and the thing beeping and flashing its message – already long when you're boarding a tram – seems to double during the touch off. What, is the data sent by carrier pigeon between the tram and Myki Central?

Maybe this toucher-off is down from Brisbane – where travellers using the Go card for bus and ferry travel have to touch on and touch off. Or from Sydney, where the Opal card works the same way. That's OK – the far north, the slower pace of life in the subtropics, we get it.

Maybe the person is a local, and it's the first time they've been on a tram after a lifetime of catching Melbourne buses (and it would be a lifetime the way the buses run in this city).