In the old days, the station staff and the ticket clerks lived in parallel universes. The station railmen were in the NUR (later the RMT) and used to work polishing the brasswork, sweeping the platforms and pocketing the excess fares. The clerks, by contrast, worked inside poky offices, joined an association (the TSSA), and behaved generally as though they were a cut above the railmen by virtue of the fact that they could read and add up and weren't pissed all the time. They were also paid significantly more money. However, there arose a new dawn and it was decreed, among other things, that passengers were now customers, the cleaning was done by cleaners and clerks were just railmen who worked inside.
This came as a shock to the clerks since they'd always assumed that as they were members of a union which had not called a strike since 1926, the management would never stitch them up. Now suddenly the foremen were called supervisors and were earning about five grand more than them—which gives you some idea of how much money they were assumed to be getting from the barrier. Suddenly the clerk, which used to be a respectable job in itself, was just a rung in the career ladder on the way to supervisor.
Moreover, the clerk's job is far and away the worst job on the underground. Even the managers admit it. If you complain, their response is not to explain how you're wrong or how they're going to make it better, but by agreeing wholeheartedly and recommending that you get out of there as quickly as possible. Mostly they'll preface this by saying, "Well I worked in a ticket office for 15 years and—while I never had one complaint—I hated every minute of it, which is why I stabbed my colleagues in the back to get this cushy management post." Or words to that effect.
It's the trauma of trying to deliver customer service which does for most of us. I can personally attest to even the most patient and polite clerk eventually crumbling faced with the sheer bad grace of the general public.
Working in the ticket office can be like driving a car in the worst traffic jam of all time and you can easily fall victim to "ticket rage." Perhaps it's something to do with being behind glass.
Being rude is, of course, the best way that a clerk can restore his battered self-esteem. Some swear by the rule "talk fast, get sacked young." Others emphasise their politeness beyond credibility. I knew a clerk who managed to make the words "sir" and "madam" more degrading than any traditional insult. Others settle for the condescending approach. "There's a new system," one clerk told a customer, "I tell you the price and you pay it."
The public do, however, answer back. One of their favourites is to say "there's no need to be rude," before I've even had a chance to be rude. Another is to say "you're in the wrong job, mate." Someone said it to a colleague the other day. "You're right," he replied, "any job where I have to meet you is clearly the wrong job."
And clerks don't seem to get as much leeway as in the past, as attested by the legend of the clerk who finally cracked, chased a punter down the escalator, punched him a few times and then booked off sick.
Stress does funny things to people. I found myself giving out "better change," such as £2 coins and crisp notes, to the people I liked and saving the coppers for people who'd annoyed me.
Eventually I justified my increasingly unpleasant behaviour as a means of encouraging people away from the window and towards the machines. But people are resourceful, and constantly invent new ways to engage your time. When I berated one poor lady, using her credit card with me instead of at the spanking new credit card ticket machine, she retorted that she preferred to have some human contact. "Careful what you wish for," I told her.
But it has to be said, things have greatly improved over the last couple of years. The rollout of the computer system, followed by the Oyster card, has done wonders. Miraculously, for a reform introduced by London Underground, these things have, by and large, worked and queues have generally got shorter—when they're not filled with people trying to fix their Oyster cards, that is. This caught us a bit off guard at first, but the lightening of the load has been very welcome. However, the most enduring rumour is that any day now they are going to cut the number of clerks and close many of the ticket offices. While on the surface it seems like a good idea to employ as few people as possible in what will always be an essentially unpleasant existence, it will make things much worse for those who remain, not to mention those who are shipped back on to the barriers. For the one thing clerks always agree on is that the only place worse than inside the ticket office is outside the ticket office.
