One of Those Days...

Today, I had 'one of those days'.

On 'one of those days', pretty much nothing goes well. For example, on 'one of those days', you buy the wrong type of train ticket so that you get stranded in London for an extra hour and half. On 'one of those days', your train from Stafford to Stoke is canceled because of vandalism on the line. And on 'one of those days' you get to Stoke by replacement bus service just as your train to Kidsgrove is leaving the platform.

At times like this, I think it's entirely reasonable to give up at this stage and get a taxi home - £11.50 well spent.

However, I am not here to grumble about the service I received or the inconvenience to which I was put.

Buying the wrong ticket was largely my fault, although a little extra advice at the station could have helped me avoid it. I certainly don't blame the train company for vandalism on the line caused by a few idiots and I think, on the whole, that arranging a replacement bus in 40 minutes is pretty good going. Equally, the timing of the Kidsgrove train is one of those things too. I do think a few staff on the station to help address any issues would have been useful but there you go. And I'm going to try to claim the taxi fayer back so I may well not have anything to moan about there, either.

What does rather make my blood boil is that one particular idiot at Stafford decided that the best way to deal with an unforeseeable train delay was to moan and bully platform staff to try to get his own taxi from Stafford to Stoke paid for by the train company. Moderately more annoying is the fact that it seems to have worked.

I was taught by my parents that nice boys are polite to other people. I also think that when a member of the platform staff is clearly having a bad day for reasons well out of his control, it wouldn't really hurt to cut him a bit of slack and let him do his job which was, as far as I can see, to try to help us out.

It is therefore pretty annoying to find that the Station Manager not only puts up with but also panders to aggression from one passenger out of twenty or so ultimately resulting in him getting special treatment above and beyond that received by more reasonable passengers.

Unfortunately, the logical lesson from this approach is that we should all turn into pillocks and harangue and berate any member of staff we can find whenever we are slightly inconvenienced. It is not entirely unlike giving in to kidnappers or paying ransoms, although I do admit that it may be a slightly less serious case!

I, however, will not be swayed. Despite having 'one of those days', I arrived home pretty relaxed and generally at one with the world because I decided to go with the flow and let events take their course. I was also feeling a little self satisfied because on the announcement that our replacement coach was awaiting us to whisk us to Stoke, I took a moment to thank the platform bloke for his help and he seemed pretty grateful for my effort. The end result of this will hopefully be that my heart attack will come just that little bit later (not unlike my train!) than that of the ignorant arse already mentioned.

So in times of crisis, chill out and be nice to harassed people - let's all spread a little joy in the world! :)