| |
|
If you are persuasive and persistent enough, you can usually get a callback from somebody in a more senior position than the guard, although you will probably feel worse after speaking to them than better.
I was caught in the saame thing on Monday - no trains from Charing Cross worth ther name at 5pm. Went to a cybercafe, sent some emails for work, had a pint with Flyboy, went back about 6:15, even fewer trains, lots of people milling around the concourse, took the tube to Elephant and a very very crowded bus home. Twenty minute journey took about 2 hours, not cvounting the time I spent hanging around in town hoping it would get better.
It's a cock, and when I used to commute in every day it was massively annoying to know that the 8:xx was less crowded, and if I didn't get that I would struggle to get onto the train before or after, and if I did get on I would be crushed up against lots of others in a horribly overcrowded train (and, for that matter, if anything went horribly wrong we would all be jampacked, unable to get out and probably doomed), and that if even one train was delayed the whole system would fall apart completely, then have to do exactly the same thing at London Bridge. In the end I found a route that doubled my ideal commuting time and involved a ten minute walk at the end, but was more reliable and less crowded. I dislike the fact that I had to do that.
But, you know, I know that lots of people don't have public transport even this regular. I tend to see it as a necessary sacrifice that has to be made if you want to work in London. I'd very much like that not to be the case, but it is. What really gets my hackles up are employers who fail to organise flexible work systems so everyone has to pile onto the same trains even if they don't have to arrive at their post at the stroke of 9, and bosses who then get heavy with people who have been held up trying to get in because of delays they had no control over, safe in the knowledge that nobody will be able to deliver the same criticisms to them. That pisses me off enormously, because it strikes me as an unfair use of power, and one that I saw lots of people on the end of when I worked in media sales. |
|
|
)