Want to ride with the staff?
Well, just buy a First Class ticket.
Look, I’m no snob, honestly. But I can afford to travel First Class on the trains, and for long journeys I generally do. I know I’ll get a seat. I know I’ll get some space. I’ll know I’ll be able to plug in my laptop and do something useful. And I know I won’t be hassled, because I’ll be among like-minded people.
Only the last few times I’ve done it, this hasn’t been the case. I haven’t found myself in a First Class compartment surrounded by First Class people. I’ve found myself in an expensive working person’s club for railway employees.
On both Transpennine Express and Virgin Trains my last few journeys have been polluted by working class bar banter, foul and belligerent language and the sort of disenfranchised employee whinging I generally only have to listen to at work.
I’m no snob, honestly. I’m the first person to shoot the shit with colleagues and friends over a beer or two in the local pub. Which is when and where, to my mind, it belongs. Not in front of the paying customers.
If you work on the railways in Britain you’re entitled to either free or discounted travel, and if you’ve put in a few years you’re entitled to do it in First Class. And that’s just fine with me if you respect it. And if you respect the people actually paying for it.
If you come and sit in an otherwise silent First Class Quiet Coach and proceed to natter unceasingly about your package holiday to Florida and your kids’ education, or congregate, sit down, splay your legs and loudly, boorishly f-and-blind about your colleagues and managers, you’re not doing that. You’re disrespecting the privilege. You’re disrespecting the customers paying your damn wages. You’re disrespecting me.
And I’m reaching the tipping point. Why bother paying a premium to be surrounded by bitching fishwives and chattering navvies? For at least some of my recent journeys I know damn well standard would have been better. And if I’m reaching the tipping point, I can’t believe I’m the only person who is.
A number of train operators don’t bother offering first class any more and I can see why. It might attract the occasional indulgence; it will always attract the expensed and irregular traveller drawn by a heady mix of free alcohol, free snacks and free bragging rights. But the bread and butter travellers who really use the facility and make it worthwhile are surely not bothering because it’s becoming so bloody naff.
’twas not ever thus, but maybe no longer.