East Coast: The Cretin with the Trolley
Don't you just hate it? Our rail services are getting more and more expensive whilst the service gets worse and worse. This week, I came across a particularly unhelpful member of the East Coast on-board team and so I just had to put pen to paper....
East Coast Customer Relations
Freepost RSRJ-LJCX-GHS
Plymouth
PL4 6AB
The Cretin and the Coffee Trolley
Dear Customer Relations,
Last week, I had the misfortune of travelling on the morning East Coast train to Kings Cross. It is something I have to do roughly every two weeks.
I must have done something really awful in a past life.
Not long after departure, I trotted along to see Mrs. Buffet for my regular bacon toastie and coffee. I believe you call this a ‘Megadeal’ as both can be purchased for a mouth-watering £4.75. Quite what is ‘Mega’ about paying £4.75 for a re-heated slice of dead pig and a cup of imitation coffee escapes me but I always seem to get peckish around that time and I imagine you might object if I set up a camping stove on my table back at my seat.
As it happens, this trip was arranged at short notice and so I was unable to buy a discount off peak super saver megadeal rail ticket and had in fact paid £195.00[1] for the dubious privilege of being on the train. It seems to me that at that price, the bacon toastie, the coffee and a full body massage should be included in the price but alas, they are not.
So, £199.75 worse off, I bounced my way back along the train to my seat carrying my little paper bag containing my slice of dead pig, a sachet of ketchup, 8 sachets of sugar[2] and what I believed to be a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, when I removed the lid from the cup, I did not find coffee, but a very pale, vaguely brown and very transparent liquid that neither smelled nor tasted remotely of any popular hot drink. What it did taste of was absolutely nothing at all. The bottom of the cup could be clearly seen through the liquid.
As I was sat some distance from the buffet, I decided that I simply couldn’t be bothered to make a second journey to see Mrs. Buffet. I replaced the lid on the liquid and resigned myself to doing without a drink.
Imagine my delight therefore when, just seconds later, Mr. Trolley trundled his merry way into my carriage! “Excuse me!” I said as he squeaked towards me, “Could you help me with my coffee? Something appears to have gone wrong with the machine in the buffet car”.
I showed him the almost clear liquid.
He explained that there isn’t a machine any more. These days, Mrs. Buffet tears open a sachet of instant coffee, pours the contents in a cup and then adds hot[3] water. He wearily waved a coffee sachet to illustrate his explanation.
“Oh” I said. “Could I possibly have another sachet then so that my coffee tastes of coffee?”
“No”, he said.
“Pardon?” I said.
“No. I’ll sell you another cup if you like”
“No, I don’t like, because I have already paid for a cup of coffee and the second one might be as bad as this one anyway”
“Then take the one you’ve got back to the buffet”
“Thank you for being so unbelievably helpful” I said (sarcastically, and rather loudly so the rest of the carriage could hear).
And with that, Mr. Trolley wandered off to piss off some more passengers.
Now I appreciate that working for an operator of last resort after their previous employer lost its franchise to operate the East Coast Main Line must be a tad depressing, especially as the staff once served excellent full English breakfasts and are now reduced to reheating slices of dead pig and tearing open sachets of excruciatingly crap coffee, but that is no excuse for being a miserable, unhelpful cretin.
So that you can identify the miserable, unhelpful cretin in question, the train was the [too much information is a bad thing] on Thursday 27th October 2011. He was the guy with the trolley.
You can then tell him that he should think of the consequences before he behaves like that towards a customer – especially when the customer was polite, and had a genuine problem. That customer might:
a) Write a letter of complaint
b) Be the owner of a consumer website
c) Publish the letter online
d) Post it to Facebook pages with over a million users
You can tell him that some days; if you get out of bed on the wrong side, the best thing to do is to climb straight back between the sheets - and stay there.
Yours faithfully,
Anthony
PS Could you also please ask your guards/train managers to stop beginning the “Thank you for putting up with East Coast” message on arrival at Kings Cross with the words: “On behalf of myself….”
It makes them sound like they’re suffering from schizophrenia.
[1] £107.00 for a standard anytime single for the outgoing journey and a mere £88.00 for a standard super offpeak single for the return.
[2] I take two sugars in a cup of coffee. There is more sugar on a fruit pastille than in your sachets.
[3] Hot is an exaggeration. Fairly warm would be more accurate.