Interesting, isn't it, that every morning at Chippenham station, there is a queue of customers waiting to buy a ticket from the two people on duty at the ticket office, but there's never a queue to get onto the platforms, because there are four "revenue protection management operatives" (or "ticket inspectors") on duty.
Four people checking the tickets that two people are selling.
A curious deployment of resources, don't you think?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
No queue onto the platforms is surely a good thing...as this means there is less chance of missing your train because you were held up by revenue staff! The reason there are more staff checking tickets is because Chippenham station is a bigger station with more passenger use (as shown by the queue at said ticket office) and so when a train arrives and perhaps 125 passengers alight from the train they don't have to queue for so long to exit the station and people can still enter the platforms too -- or would you rather miss you train because other staff are busy checking other passengers tickets and that extra member of staff you moved to the ticket office wasn't able to check your ticket. They would have to totally retrain revenue staff in ticket selling at the ticket office which would mean less staff available to work and cost money not forgetting loosing money in uncollected fares (i.e: the cost of fare dodging passengers). Yes you could perhaps have a revenue staff member in the ticket office but then they would have to leave when the train arrives and that would annoy even more passengers as the ticket office window would close right in-front of them which probably doesn't look good/bode well with passengers.
Post a Comment