2007 Off To A Cracker

Well, here we are… Glenbrook train station, start of the year.  In 2006, the station was attended to by a chirpy guy called Bill who knew your name, processed your ticket requests no fuss and it was a sleepy hollow of niceness in a grim world of bureaucratic CityRail.  I arrived early this morning to buy my first ticket for 2007.

But Bill wasn’t there… there was a young guy wearing a tie and a badge numbered instead of a friendly name like “Bill”.  I asked politely for a “Monthly to the City” and he asked me to fill out a 2 page form!  “What’s this?” I asked.  Young Whip told me that any ticket greater than 28 days required this form to be filled in as a record for CityRail in the event the ticket is lost.  I replied “But I have a receipt?” and he said, “yes, but that’s YOUR evidence, we require a form”.  I then said the fateful words “Bill never asked for these to be filled in, is this new?”…. well all I got then from the terse tie wearer was “Well Bill was slack on a number of things around here, and I have already had some run ins about that…”

I now felt that poor Bill was stuck in the basement of the CityRail Gestapo building in town doing “paper work” for the rest of his days…. As I filled in the form, Young Whip proceeded to do his end of the transaction.  $204 please he said… “What the!  It was $172 before Xmas!!”  He said that it no longer goes on weeks and days and I have to take it to the end of the week if the 28 days doesn’t fall on a Friday which in this case it doesn’t.  I have ended the ticket on 16 Feb so that, on a daily rate, is $204.  Fark me!  I realised that I was getting greater than 28 days, but shit you’d ask first wouldn’t you…  I paid the 28 days on my Mastercard and he gets out the old fashion slider machine and I have noticed that there are now 5 people behind me waiting.  I would bet that half of them would be after a monthly… It took me 6 minutes to fill in the form and do the credit card manually.  I wonder how long this “by the book” attitude will last before we return to Bill style station management!

Welcome to 2007 dear readers…