Everybody’s problem but mine

Two great ways to stand out on the Internet;
Be a blogger whining about bad customer service,
Or be an old man whining about the young.

Twice-weekly visits to one of my clients currently entail an early morning start from my sleepy local train station for what is admittedly a slightly obscure journey. As the station is unmanned I usually end up buying my ticket on that first train of the day.

Even though my off-the-beaten-track ticket challenges some of Northern Rail’s guards more than somewhat it’s never a problem. The handful of guards who don’t know how to issue it generally just ask me to pick up a ticket when I first change trains with the exception of one enterprising soul who actually rang his office from the train to find out how to do it for me.

At least it was never a problem until this week.

When I met a young guard called Mark.

 

Old-school jobsworth

Mark’s manager has told him to “do more” to collect revenue so that’s exactly what he’s going to do. He doesn’t know how to issue the ticket I want of course but he’s got to sell me one nonetheless. After all, he flatteringly observed, he’s lost count of the number of cheeky fare-dodgers who disappeared straight out of the station after they had promised him faithfully they’d be buying a ticket just as soon as they got there. Clearly waving my Platinum AMEX at him and asking for a fare six-times the cost of a trip to that first interchange station has marked this middle-aged professional as most likely “on the thieve”.

I’ve got to buy a ticket or get off his train. He can’t sell me the ticket I’ve asked for, but that’s probably just one of my nefarious fare-dodging schemes and he’s not going to let me get away with it. After all, his manager has told him not to. So he spent the next ten minutes presenting me with am inventive range of inconvenient and expensive options I needed to choose from because he can’t do his job.

I can, for example, get off his train at the first manned station and buy my full ticket there, adding an hour to my journey (yeah, I know it’s difficult mate but what can I do?) Or he can sell me a partial ticket and I can “pay an excess” when I change trains. Of course, he has no idea whether that’ll cost me more in the end – I mean why would he, with his ticket machine in his hand, know something like that?  Or I could tell him the code to put into his machine to find my fare, which obviously if I did make this alleged trip regularly I’d know.

And anyway, if I have made this alleged trip before, why don’t I have an old ticket to show him, eah, eah?

Yep Mark, you’ve tumbled me mate. You’ve got me bang to rights.

 

New-school work ethic

I didn’t ask for Mark the Moron’s name. I’m not a complainer. In some respects I’m the worst possible customer – I accept your service for what it is, if it’s acceptable I’ll keep using it and if it isn’t then I’ll quietly take my money elsewhere. It’s not my job to make you do yours better. Plus, on an individual level, I’ve long since learnt that even if you do manage to destroy the odd womble the smell of the carcass will just bring another one out of the burrow.

But I nonetheless have Mark the Moron’s name and the reason I have it is that he repeatedly volunteered it. He seemed unusually keen for me to make a complaint in fact, inviting me to do so multiple times over the course if this ten-minute farrago.And here’s why this story sticks in my mind. It’s not the poor service but the astonishingly piss-poor attitude to both his job and his customers; an attitude that I can best sum up as “it’s everybody else’s problem, it’s everybody else’s responsibility and it’s everybody else’s fault”.

Mark the Moron doesn’t know how to issue my ticket and in what passes for Mark the Moron’s mind it’s entirely appropriate that I, the paying customer, am inconvenienced, expensed or otherwise pissed about as a result. I should feel free to write in and complain about his inability to do his job – if I do maybe his manager will give him the training he needs so he can do it. If buying two tickets costs me more money, again I should just write in and complain and I’ll get it back.

If I write in and complain I’ll even get some free travel vouchers out of it too! Yes, Mark the Moron’s master plan to honour his manager’s instructions to get more revenue is to bully passengers into buying one ticket and encourage them to complain to Northern Rail who will pay out multiple free ones in return.

And what the hell? It’s only a paying customer’s time wasted, worse complaint statistics for Northern Rail and lost revenue to the company paying his wages.

Who cares about that man?

Certainly not Mark the Moron.

 

Reaping what society sows

One of the comforts of growing old is complaining about the young; and for my generation one of the most common complaints is of the lazy, entitled generation wrought upon us by the social changes that reached their full swing in the caring nineties. A generation who seem to think they have a right to a good job rather than having to work hard for it, a generation who’ve been taught to run to teacher every time something nasty befalls them and a generation coddled by a nanny state who’ll always be there to protect their precious feelings and provide if they’re not providing for themselves.

I can’t imagine not taking total responsibility for my ability to do my job. I can’t imagine ever making my inability to do my job my customer’s problem. I can’t imagine keenly inviting a customer to complain about me if they have a problem with me rather than making things right myself and I can’t imagine gushing at the prospect of an aggrieved customer taking compensating freebies out of my employer as a result of my inability to do my job. My lasting memory of my encounter with Mark the Moron is that he had all of these in spades.

That guard who went off and phoned his office from the train to find out how to issue my ticket was an older guy, taking responsibility for his own job and doing it properly. Twenty-something Mark the Moron would never think of doing something like that. He’d probably laugh if you told him. I mean, why would you do something like that “mate” – it’s your manager’s fault, it’s the company’s responsibility and it’s the customer’s problem. Life is just so much easier when you can’t be assed and the consequences are everybody else’s.

My experience with Mark the Moron is thus far unique and I’d rather like to think it will stay that way. But I can’t help recognising a work ethic I’ve seen before and I seem to be seeing more and more. Everybody but me is responsible, everybody but me is to blame, and it’s everybody’s problem but mine. The truth is that life is hard, life is tough, life is unfair and good things are to be earned, not handed to you by some inalienable cosmic right.  The more we insulate the young from these truths the fewer of them will learn them.

I therefore take little consolation from the fact I’ll probably never encounter Mark the Moron again. It’s like waiting for a train after all; there’ll be another one along in a minute.