It's a balmy, lazy Saturday afternoon in Eastleigh and I'm on control. I decide that the best use of my time is not to tackle the huge pile in the in-tray, but to patrol the bus station for a bit, making sure none of our customers are unduly troubled by the warm sunshine, that kind of thing.
The time is 1528. I'm stood talking to a couple of the guys on stand C. An indignant chap storms up and demands to know what has happened to the 1520 service E to Winchester. He thumps the ground with his stick, proclaiming how ridiculous it is that the bus should be so late.
There are two problems. Firstly, service E is run by Bluestar, so we have no way of knowing if there is a problem. Secondly, we all recall seeing the bus arrive and leave spot on time, so we don't actually think there is a problem in the first place.
I ask rhetorically if there is anyone else waiting - the E is a busy bus and there would be a long queue - but we can all see there is no-one at the stand.
The man declares that it must have left early, but we are sure it didn't. He says he's been there a good few minutes and there has definitely been no bus.
I ask if he realises that it is actually 28 minutes past. He looks at his watch, agrees that it's 28 past, and says "but I've been waiting AT LEAST five minutes".....
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4 comments:
Your average cheap'n'shabby operator would've said "Bluestar mate, nuffink to do wiv me"...
Your normally fairly good operator would've explained that Bluestar and Purple Violet were two separate companies, tried to explain the bus was due to have gone 3 minutes before he turned up, offered to pass on his complaint and passed him on to the next departure.
An exceptional operator would've run the guy home in his car....
Which, I wonder, were you...
None of the above applies, because the gentleman stormed off in a huff and rounded the corner of Sainsbury's never to be seen again.
Since you ask, there are times when we are "fairly good" and a fair few times when we are "exceptional" by your standards. I'll maybe recount some examples when I get five minutes, but on this occasion the gentleman was simply not interested once he realised the bus had gone.
I confess it was in the hope of provoking a few of those "exceptional" anecdotes that I commented as I did...
I look forward to your recounting...
Well, as one of "those anecdotes", the other evening I ran into the bus station off a C journey with the next bit to be dead to depot. On A stand were four passengers which I thought was a tad strange as the First Bus run evening service A should have departed some time previously. One of them came up to me and asked if I knew where the aforementioned service was which of course I didn't; they had tried ringing First's number but no response . . . the upshot was I offered to take them all back to where they were going, despite having already been at work for over thirteen hours myself at this point - just as we had loaded them up and I'd established where they were going to the A turned up!! So a mad scramble ensued - they got their bus home and my good deed wasn't required, although speaking to one of them the next day they would have rather stayed with me as apparently the driver offered no apology or explanation for his lateness and indeed was very put out by the fact there were passengers wanting to actually catch his bus . . .
Ant (on "anonymous" cos he can't remember his password to sign in!!!)
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