The London Underground is the Venus flytrap of jobs. There you are, buzzing about, poor but happy, when you catch the smell of regular wages, cups of tea and early starts. Working-class culture, without much working. Over you trot, to have a look and… there you are, stuck. Everyone I ever met on the underground will tell you that they only joined for six months and here they are 25 years later, fat and dull and living in Borehamwood.
The minutes go slowly, but the years race by. With nothing much to do, it is easy to watch your life shrivel away. But those few that escape, normally through sackings, rarely report much good news from the outside world.
I started out with the best of intentions. A few days into the job, someone walked past me on the barrier and showed me their travelcard wedged behind an upturned middle finger. I was shocked. But the other staff were disdainful. "Deal with it," they told me.
"Dealing with it" consisted of being rude and surly to a rude and surly public. But I got too cavalier and started being too rude, too surly. Even my mentor, who had taught me everything about being obnoxious, disavowed me. "I've created a monster," he told people. Then he pulled off a great escape—medical retirement at 41. With a full pension, he married and emigrated to Australia.
Even when I wasn't being objectionable, the public would still get the hump. A woman came to the window and told me that the ticket machine had stolen her £4. This is an everyday occurrence, and I needed to get a print-out from the back of the office. I asked her to wait a second while I got it.
"What? How can you be so rude!" she exclaimed, appalled.
My eyes flitted from hers to the man standing behind her in the queue. Often in these circumstances you implore bystanders with your eyes, like a drunk groping a banister, to try to retain a sense of normality. When the lady had stormed off, the man came to the window. I asked him, a little sadly: "Excuse me, but can I ask your opinion of that?"
"No," he said, "I'm in a hurry."
I had long considered the ability to put up with a job to be one of my strong points. The parade of punters eager to tell me "you're in the wrong job, mate" got short shrift. But I was beginning to wonder how bad it would have to get before I cracked. I was soon to find out.
My manager came to see me with two separate complaints that I had told customers to "fuck off." I protested, pointing out that prior to this I had not had a complaint for 18 months. (He didn't realise that I had spent eight of those months off sick.) But, he warned me, any repeat and I would kiss goodbye to the chance of promotion to supervisor, the only way, I had ascertained, that I could possibly survive much longer.
So, just seven days later, I am serving a customer at the excess fare window who has strayed out of the zone of her travelcard. I tell her that she is supposed to pay for any extension to her travelcard before she travels, and ask her for the excess, which is £1.10.
"Just how fucking much?" she says.
I choose my words carefully. "It's one pound ten," I say, "but I'm not going to serve you, you can fuck off back to zone two." That's my right: once they swear at you, you don't have to serve them.
She goes apeshit and starts raving that she wants to make a written complaint. I see my supervisor hopes going up in smoke. I also go apeshit.
She leaves. Half an hour later a man appears at my window. He wants to know if I am the man who swore at his wife. A queue is forming behind him. I tell him to go away. He starts to imply that I wanted to slap his wife. I tell him to fuck off. He finally fucks off—to the supervisor's office to make a complaint.
I serve the queue, all of whom look at me as though I have murdered a small child. I reflect that this could be my last day on the underground. In fact, to my astonishment, I am not sacked. A rumour suggests the reason is that the man has demanded my sacking, which has offended my manager's principles. It is only much later that I realise how much he has stuck his neck out for me. But I am a marked man. With my temperament, and no chance of getting out of the ticket office, I am on my last legs.
They send me to anger management counselling. The counsellor takes a shine to me, and we agree that I need to leave the ticket office. In an organisation the size of Transport for London, she says, there must be more opportunities than just becoming a supervisor (now closed) or a driver (two-year waiting list). I try to meet my managers to discuss her recommendations. They ignore my requests.
Things go on much as before. I keep my nose clean for a few months, but then it all goes wrong. Two complaints within a couple of days. A month later, one more, followed by a huge row with a supervisor. I go sick in protest. A manager phones me up to tell me that I am fucked. They suspend me. My union rep gets hold of the disciplinary panel submission. He tells me I am fucked.
I agree to resign. My manager says he will bung me a few weeks' extra money to help me out. The next day, after I have signed on the dotted line, he tells me that he can't pay me the extra.
So I kiss goodbye to a job for life, good holidays, great pension, 5am starts, surly punters, disloyal colleagues, mendacious managers. Where do I go from here? Maybe I'll try the post office.
