Traffic is at a standstill, a Mack truck is blowing fumes directly into your car, and that can't-miss morning meeting your boss asked you to attend started 10 minutes ago.

But if you can separate yourself from the stress and glance up, Yolanda Perry might just improve your day.

She's a toll cashier who works five days a week on Ga. 400, dispensing quarters and smiles to the 2,000 motorists who creep through her lane every day.

"You look beautiful today . . . I love that outfit," she told a blond woman dressed in pink from head to toe. Taken aback, the woman thanked Perry and drove on.

"You never know when you can make someone's day," Perry said.

Every few seconds, she gets to do just that.

The Decatur native is one of 38 cashiers who work the 6.25-mile toll road that serves 122,000 vehicles on weekdays and operates 18 lanes --- nine northbound and nine southbound.

Perry makes a point of showing a little compassion to everyone who comes her way. She says life is too short to do otherwise.

Sometimes she does it by providing extra change to motorists who are a few cents shy of the 50-cent toll. Other times, she buys makeup and plastic jewelry from the Dollar Store for the children of her regular customers.

"I've had parents tell me their kids want to go through my lane because they think I'm nice," said Perry, 34, who has worked the booth for 3 1/2 years. "And I love that, since I don't have any kids of my own."

Perry got the job while looking for part-time work to supplement her janitorial job at Northside Hospital. Soon afterward, she dropped her hospital duties and began to work full time at the toll plaza.

She eschews the notion that sitting in a tollbooth for eight hours a day could be boring. It's just the opposite.

"Before I had this job, I didn't know anything about other cultures and other types of people," she said. "I feel like I've learned so much."

Perched on a swiveling gray chair during a sweltering morning rush hour, Perry greeted all of her customers with kind words as the moan of an air conditioner filled the tiny booth.

"Buenos dias," she said to a Hispanic truck driver, one of her regulars.

"I really don't know Spanish. I just know how to greet people, and my customers taught me that." Perry has even been asked out on dates --- often multiple times by commuters who beg for a home phone or cellphone number. Alas, she already has a boyfriend and is off the market.

"They say they'll bring me lunch or tell me I look like Kelly Rowland from Destiny's Child," she said with a chuckle.

Motorists as friends

On a recent Thursday, Perry leaned out the window of Lane 2 on the northbound side of the highway. A Jeep and three sedans greeted her.

Near the end of the line, a woman dressed in a tailored suit used the brief pause in her commute to line her lips. As a young couple waited for change, the man driving asked Perry what happens when a motorist doesn't have enough money, and she explained the IOU system.

"Oh, I give out plenty of those," she said. "You'd be surprised."

And inevitably, as the morning rush hour continued, Perry doled out her share of IOUs to disheartened drivers.

Repeat offenders familiar with the procedure just asked for one of the slips. Others pulled up with terror in their eyes and were relieved to find they would merely be required to mail in $1.50.

At 9:21, a lull in morning traffic allowed Perry to lean back inside her sparsely decorated 4x11-foot booth. A most-wanted list of suspected terrorists is taped to her right window. Avon hand lotion and antibacterial gel sit next to her cash register, weapons against the grime that coats her hands from handling change all day.

Just behind the booth is a metal staircase that leads to a 600-foot-long tunnel beneath the highway. Perry uses the stairs to enter and exit the plaza and to dart down when she needs a bathroom break.

"It's really just an easy job . . . it's just being polite to people," she said.

And while most customers return her grin with a wave or a nod, Perry says there are some who barely acknowledge her and a very small number who have pulled up wearing only a smile.

"They're just perverts who drive by for attention; I don't even look at them," she said.

2-way spirit-boosting

But Perry does pay extra attention to the customers who drive up in hysterics because they've lost their way.

When that happens, she plays counselor to the manic motorists, calming their frazzled nerves and dispensing directions during their brief stop at her booth.

"A lot of people get messed up trying to get to other states and stuff, but I turn them around," she said.

And for all her efforts to cheer everyone else up, Perry said, she has received the same treatment from her customers.

When her cousin died nearly two months ago, even simple activities such as listening to the radio flooded Perry's eyes with tears.

"Even when I was so down, customers would drive through and bring me back up again," she said. "Some of them said they were praying for me, and I really appreciated that."

Even though Perry enjoys her job, she avoids Ga. 400 on her days off. The only time she rolls through the tollbooth is on her way home. And she drops her 50 cents into the change collector like the thousands of people before her.