Customer Service Train-ing

Isn't it cold though? Brrrr and all that.

I'm currently looking anxiously out of my office window to the train station opposite, wondering if I'm going to get home tonight. Not much seems to have moved in or out all day since I got here this morning, and that's a worry, when you are the worrying sort, like me.



#Feral Ashford International Station(ary).

 I went over to have a gander earlier, to find out if trains were in fact running today. What I was going to do, was have a look at the little screens, and see if any of the trains said "Delayed" or "Cancelled" on them, and work it out myself from that. I'm good like that - give me the information and I'll digest it - I'm quite a talent.

However, due to the widespread disruption, they have decided to turn these screens off and replace with a message stating that due to "RAIL ADHESION PROBLEMS*" there was widespread disruption today.

So, surely, you'd have thought that to ask a member of the station staff, so easily identified in their florescent orange tabards, would be the next best and indeed ONLY option to find out when the fuck a train would be next coming along.

But clearly not, judging by how irked the tabarded-twats seemed to be at being asked the question.

Oh I'm sorry, have you already been asked the same question 10 times in the past half hour? Well TURN THE FUCKING SCREENS ON THEN, YOU USELESS IDIOTS!!!

Do these fucking cretins honestly expect people to just turn up onto a platform, stand there in minus temperatures with no information, no announcements and just think "Well, I may as well just stand here and freeze my nuts off in the vain hope that a train will come along eventually. Asking a member of staff would be a silly idea, as even if there isn't a train for another 2 hours, I'd much rather stand here aimlessly and die of hypothermia waiting for something to come along than gather some information and better spend my time sat in a warm coffee shop until the next expected train is actually due."

It's one of my many, many bugbears that train and platform staff seem to get so disgruntled and annoyed about being continually asked the same questions about when the trains are due, as if it somehow isn't their fucking job to help the public get on and off trains.

They often appear so bloody annoyed at the stupidity of the commuter asking such a question, as if we should somehow be all too aware that they have already answered that question barely 5 minutes earlier, and that if we weren't there to hear it then it was our fault.

If you really don't like being asked "When is the next train to...." I suggest not getting a job that involves standing on a platform with a shiny orange jacket on!

The fact is, if you didn't try your best to make it some kind of cryptic riddle as to when the next train was likely to arrive by turning your myriad of information monitors into static statements of the frankly obvious† we wouldn't need to bother you in the first place!

I have more to say on this issue, but I want to try and get home now. So goodbye.



* I mean, what the fuck? What was it, wrong type of Pritt-stick?
†They may as well say "There's a bit of bad weather today, so the trains are fucked. Just how fucked they are though, you'll need to find out yourselves by asking the platform staff individually, one by one, until they get really fucked off with you all."