please empty your brain below

I had a premonition this was not going to end well when I read your 1659 post.

Ingatestone I suppose?
'You lot' just shows the contempt with which the likes of railway employees regard their customers. Has anyone ever wondered why signs saying abusive behaviour will not be tolerated always appear at monopolies: railway stations, post offices, doctors surgeries etc. People like that woman disgust me. Hope you get home safely DG.
Unfortunately the combination of passengers wandering around an unfamiliar location and moving vehicles is never a good one, as you said yourself, shouty woman got the people off the bus quickly so you could get on with your journey - or would you prefer faffing about?
Yes yes yes...but are you home yet?
Oh how I detest the dreaded Rail Replacement Bus trips. There are many worse things in the world, but I am hard pressed to come up with any when faced with such a journey
@ OverReacter - err do you know the woman was a railway employee? Quite likely to be a bus or coach company employee or even someone from a third party brought in to supervise the rail replacement service. I agree the words were very poor but best not to make sweeping statements unless you were there and asked who the woman worked for. It's actually very likely she worked for an independent small company and not a "monopoly" at all. And when was there was a monopoly operator on the national rail network? They all compete from the franchises.

Oh and the woman may well have been on her feet, outside, for many hours making sure people are kept safe and get home. It's actually quite hard to remain unfailingly polite after hours and hours of standing around doing the same task and handling endless questions and dealing with all the unseen (to the passenger) issues like delayed inward buses, traffic delays, train delays etc.
One of our Christmas guests took an hour longer than he'd thought to get home yesterday. Trains, not buses, this time.

The worst thing is that often the train company and the bus company are, ultimately, the same company. Now if they could just get their collective acts together and their asses in gear . . .

Glad you got home in the end!
I guess the reason that the 'monopolies' have those signs up is because they have no need to consider good customer service.

Your GP would rather you went elsewhere as they have an overflow of patients. The Post Office know you need to use them. The railway companies pretend to have competition but in reality there is none.

Undoubtedly there is a level of customer anger as there is in any service role. But having seen some people in these industries talk about their attitudes privately, they don't make it easier for themselves. They treat the customer that way because they know they can and get away with it.

They see the customer as a problem to get rid of. They don't have conflict resolution training. Then they complain when they get assaulted for causing conflict.

I'm not condoning assault in the slightest, I think it's a terrible way to deal with a fellow human. But a greater effort could be made to reduce conflict, and this would have a knock on effect in the way the staff are treated by some, I suspect.
I believe in the anthropic principle and if those people weren't so rude they wouldn't have been in this place doing this. Those shuttle bus conductors at Stonehenge are arguably more helpful.
I must write my posts better.

Today's subtext was supposed to be "the system is crap", not "the staff are rude".
But part of the reason why the system is crap is because there are staff that don't give a damn,

After all, who does want to stand in a cold car-park directing people who ask the same question all day? That's a thankless task.

But rather than just lumping it and both sides thinking 'Oh god a bus replacement service, this is going to be terrible', someone that is paid a lot of moeny should think "How can we make this experience less terrible for passengers", and make strides towards doing so.

Having mandatory signs (proper ones, not hastily written ones) on all RR buses would be a start. Poor person in car park would then have to field less questions and most likely feel happier.
Exactly. I have never seen a single sign when rail replacement is on. Occasionally the buses will have a bit of A4 paper stuck in the front.

Considering that TfL print out huge one use posters just to say sorry that the service was poor of a morning, this is not a technology beyond the realm of man.

Even better, you can have a printer at eg Victoria and there is a convenient network of vehicles nearby running to the very station where the rail replacement will be happening.

If TfL will print 30 of them at the drop of a hat to apologise for poor service, it can't be that great a cost...

I guess it goes like this:
- Network Rail decide to do some works
- TOC say "Oh dear. Who can we get to run our services for us? Let's ask Crappy Bus Ltd"
- TOC point people out the station door
- Once outside the station door, the TOC staff no longer care, and just leave the Crappy Bus staff to get on with it.

The Crappy Bus people don't care, as they are the only provider with enough buses to go round, the TOC don't care as they can blame it on Crappy Bus and Network Rail, and the passenger gets stuck in the middle of two companies who only have a relationship with each other, and neither of whom feel they have any duty to the passengers.

I'm sure standing in a cold car park for several hours does take it out of you. But they don't make it easy for themselves!
I am gratified that several others see the lousy treatment dished out to customers in the same light as I do. Kirk's first post hit the nail on the head: they behave the way they do because they can get away with it (because the customer has no choice). By the way DG how was the final leg of your journey home? Indeed was the bus driver a decent driver?

Off post a bit I know but if DG wants to see some really awful customer service online, go to the FGW website and see if you can make head or tail of some the stuff about substitute rail services. Most of the rubbish I spotted related to today (28th) so it may have been replaced/erased by now but talk about 'could not care less' for incomprehensible rubbish!










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