I am bloody fuming about something that happened to me today.
On the spur of the moment I took my three year old daughter on her first train ride. We went from Norwich Station to Ipswich and return.
I parked my car in a multi-story car park which doubles as the rail car park and a general car park for a leisure complex. It's the first time I've parked there for yonks. There are two automatic barriers at the end of two lanes of a ramp up to the car park. The left hand lane (where the sign showing the prices is situated), was coned off. I go to the right lane where there are two ticket machines, one for "rail users" and the other for other users. Although there are no prices shown, there is a sign which implies that the rail users ticket will be cheaper.
I select a rail users ticket, park my car, rush to station buy train ticket, get car park ticket franked and get on train, all in the space of ten minutes.
I return to the car park a couple of hours later, put my ticket in the payment machine which quotes £6 to pay. This seems steep for a couple of hours and then I notice that there are two tariffs. The one for rail users is £6 all day - one price only. The two hourly rate for the general users tariff is £2.60.
Sorry this is boring but I'll get to the point.
I go to the ticket office and am confronted by a fucking Security Guard, clearly ex Copper, who has that arrogant, patronising manner that all Coppers seem to have these days. I explain what's happened. That I clearly made a mistake and bought the wrong ticket.
"Didn't you see the three signs sir" said the muppet.
"No" I said, "there wasn't one by the right hand entrance", and I didn't notice the one on the far left side".
We argued the toss but he wouldn't budge so I tried to go over his head to his boss but all he would do was give me the blokes name and address. At one point this patronising prick started quoting the Highway Code at me and reminding me that I should keep a proper look out to read all the signs.
Eventually, I said to him,
"What I cannot understand is that you appear to have no authority or willingness to deal with a genuine mistake".
"Well," he said, "it isn't a genuine mistake is it?"
"I beg your pardon," I said, and he then repeated what he'd said.
"Do you accept it's a mistake then?" I said,
"Yes" he reluctantly confirmed.
"But not a genuine one?" I said, and he agreed.
What a fucking cheek. I was completely gob-smacked. I decided that I had no chance with this jobs-worth knobhead and got him to give me a receipt and the name and address of his boss. I cannot believe that this idiot was unable or willing to give somebody the benefit of the doubt even when pointed out to him the charges sign was not in as prominent a position as he made out.
I dashed off a letter to his boss, immediately I got home. It's not the money, it's the fucking principal. People like him are maybe OK to guard the place and sort out the scum-bags who vandalise it, but they should not ever be let out of their cage to attack ordinary members of the public who should expect a more customer friendly approach.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!
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Comments
Whilst I sympathise with you - having been on the receiving end more than a few times in my life - never has the old maxim 'you pay peanuts, you get monkeys' been more appropriate than it is here in the Uk right now. That bloke was probably getting paid 12 grand a year, was thick as pigshit and couldn't do anything other than what he was doing.
I know its enough to want to cave someone's swede in, as, like I said before, I've been there before, but I've come to the conclusion that there is, unfortunately fuck all you can do about it. His boss will probably be just as useless as him, there will be some stupid bye-law or other on his side, and, although you might get your ticket refunded as sometimes they cave simply because they can't be arsed with the paperwork, more than likely you won't.
Don't let it ruin your day fella (sounds a bit daft at 2:15 in the morning!) and don't stew on it. Its the worst thing you can do - I did it once, the more I thought about something, the more pissed off I got. In the end I realised its futile arguing about anything any more - either knock someone out at the time, or move on.
Probably not what you want to hear, but I reckon dwelling on it will only make you worse - so chill, have a couple of beers and watch the cricket in the morning - that'll sort you out!
As an example of 'seizing the moment', twice this week I have had little pricks get on the bus and play music out of their mobile phones. The first time (Tuesday) I put up with it and wished I hadn't all day long. Today I got on the bus from the station and some little pikey tit was doing it again - so I politely asked him to desist (or rather, told him that I didn't want to listen to the shit he was playing, shouldn't be ABLE to hear it with my own MP3 player on, and advised him that if he didn't stop doing it I would relieve him of said phone and stamp on the fucker - swiftly proceeding to exact similar revenge on his neck)
"Carpe Momentum"
Good advice mate. Actually, I find writing it down helps to lower the cortisol levels. Exit one chilled Bing, off to bye byes.
It just goes to show, in the immortal words of Tommy Cooper, "its not the principle, its the money!!"....:-)
Nice one. Make sure you give the **** a wave the next time you pass the job centre queue!