Tuesday 9 November 2010

Time share seating

This morning's train rocked up with two carriages. Yippee!

Cue announcement from Hangdog Conductor, without a hint of irony, "We apologise for the crowded nature of this morning's journey. Due to a clerical error, we will not be honouring seat reservations".

Now, I've heard this announcement at least once a week for the last two years, and that's only on the days that they bother with the apology. Perhaps the clerk that is responsible for the "clerical errors" might need some job retraining. What the announcement really means is, "Season pass holders don't get seat reservations, so you can get stuffed. All others with that have seat reservations can also get stuffed."

Train buddy and I managed to get seats this morning - just. Several of the other regular travelers that join at the next station weren't so lucky. However, I set up a seat time share arrangement with them. Community spirit isn't dead!

As poor Hangdog Conductor tried vainly to check tickets along the aisle that was virtually impenetrable with passengers, we enquired why the service had been more abominable than usual over the last week or so. He had no answer other than a nearly robotic, "On behalf of East Midlands Trains, we apologise for inconvenience [sigh]".

1 comment:

  1. All the trains have been a bit shit the last few weeks. the Sheffield - Chesterfield run (seriously, what's to get wrong?) has been unreliable. It's generally announced as being a few minutes late, and then as the promised time comes and goes but no train does, they bump it up a few minutes. RThe other week this happened 6 times, making a 5 minute train 40 minutes late, and culminated with an exciting (and quite distant) last minute platform change. Instead of playing the platform alteration announcement on a loop for the 5 minutes solid before the damn thing actually arrived, they'd have been better off playing the Benny Hill theme as we all looked around in bewilderment and then en masse made the panicked, luggage laden sprint over the bridge.
    The reason given? 'Planned engineering works.' so how the hell did they NOT know how long the delay would be?

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