First Great Useless

As you'll no doubt already be aware, I have a problem with First Great Western. They are not capable of running the service they are supposed to provide. We are halfway through this week and my delays already total more than an hour.

My problem is not generally with FGW front-line staff (though occasionally it is), my gripe is mostly with the appalling management who havn't a clue how to efficiently run a railway. In fact they can't be trusted to do most things.

Below is a picture I took at Bath Spa station on Saturday in the ticket office. The office is partly closed at the moment for refurbishment and this poster, signed by Ian Monks the station manager, apologizes for the inconvenience caused during the refurbishment. This poster sums up fantastically so many things about FGW.

Now anyone can make a typo. Though even the most basic proof-reading by a person of limited intelligence should spot this one before printing. What's worse though, is that having spotted this mistake after printing, you'd have thought Ian Monks would have been quite embarrassed and taken the poster down and printed another. But no, it's just neatly crossed out and corrected with a biro, so that everybody has their attention is drawn to how stupid it is. Nice.

Air Con & Ticket Barriers

These are things that have annoyed me today, (I've had a bad day):

1. The climate control in my building.

It’s shite, and controlled by morons.

It’s been scorching hot outside all week, the sun is heating up all rooms with south facing windows and all the bloody air-con does is circulate hot air. We got a thermometer today and measured the temperature in the office at 28°C. A bloody humid 28° at that. It’s unbearable, and it’s only April. Much more of this, and by the time June and July comes there is gonna be lots of seriously irritable people at work.

Well, I’ll be seriously irritable.

The problem of crap air-conditioning is compounded by the building services people, who in their infinite wisdom, have deemed that because it’s April, it’s still winter. As a result the radiators are still on. Can you believe it? Thankfully in our office we can turn them off individually, but others, in the corridor for example, have no such facility and are pumping out heat. It’s beyond a joke.


2. Stupid people and ticket barriers.

This happens to me nearly every day. But having sat in a sauna all day at work, you can imagine that today it riled me more than it does most days.

What is so difficult about putting your ticket in the machine?

And why can’t you have your ticket ready before you reach the gate. There are only 5 barriers at Cardiff, so at most there is are only 3 barriers letting people into the station. Tonight there were only two; in front of one, a fat man with a suitcase was trying to find the slot for the ticket to go in. In front of the other, a dumb blonde was fumbling around in her purse for a ticket she had bought only seconds earlier. Between them they stopped access to the trains for about a minute, while a queue of around twenty people formed.

This evenings nincompoops, can possibly be forgiven, in that the did not appear to be commuters, yet every day I see the same people who haven’t got their tickets ready when they get to the gates, or do not know that they have to take their ticket from the top of the machine for it to open. You’d have thought they’d have learnt by now.

But then again, by their very nature, stupid people don’t learn.

Picture taken from macspite on flikr.com

Mindless Stupidity

If you stick with me on this blog you’ll soon realise that one of the things I hate more than anything else is stupidity.

Stupid people exist. They are everywhere. And worse… they are allowed to breed – thus populating our planet with even more stupid people.

Two incredibly stupid people made me late for work this morning and I am bloody furious about it. People make mistakes of course, they are, after all, only human. But when people are so bloody stupid that the right answer is staring them in the face and they just don’t get it, then I propose – sterilization. Or at the very least, moving them to a job in which their mindless stupidity wont make me late for work.

First is the case of the bus driver. He works for the company “First” (Slogan: Transforming Travel – they are not wrong!). The buses in Bath are bloody expensive, so generally I cycle around, but it was raining this morning so I decided to get the bus to the station.

“£1.60 to the station please” I said and dropped two pound coins onto his tray.

He took my coins, printed my ticket, and then scratched his head for what seems like an eternity. He then proceeded to fumble around in his change tray for about a minute before finally dropping two 10p coins on to the tray for me.

“I gave you two pounds” I say.

“Ug”

“I gave you two pounds, that should be 40p change, not 20p”

“Ug”

“£2 minus £1.60 is 40p. – You owe me another 20p” I say, thinking this must be some kind of joke.

“Ug” came the standard reply again, only this time more scratching around in the change before producing four 5p coins.

“Thank you” I say

“Ug”

So there you have it. I’m bloody glad there was little traffic on the road. Frankly I doubt he’d have stopped in time if anything had pulled out in front of him.

A bit of luck though, arriving at the station, my normal train was late – Excellent the thicko hasn’t made me late….. oh no, another thicko is gonna do that….

A rushed turn-around at Bristol Temple Meads and the late running 7:15 fast service to Cardiff pulls out of the station two minutes ahead of the slow all-stopping 7:33 to the same destination.

Then thicko number two ruins my morning. The face-less signalman. How I’d love to smash his face in. Mr (or Mrs – to be fair) signalman decides to hold our train outside Bristol while we wait for the slow service to overtake us.

What? This is madness! We could build up some speed, catch up a little time, and make Cardiff maybe just 10 min late. But no. Some moron has decided that we should follow the slow service, extending our delay from 15 to 35 minutes.

Having left the station ahead of the slow service, surely it was a more complicated signalling manoeuvre to put us on the “wrong track” for 5 min while the other train passed? Mindless Stupidity.

And who are the train company that run the railways in this corner of Britain? Yep – you guessed it.

First – No qualifications required!