Notes from underground

For those of us who work for the underground, the World Cup isn't nearly as good as the Olympics. There are too few games to fill the boring hours
July 21, 2006

The underground and the World Cup could be a match made in heaven. Not for the drivers, who obviously have to drive, nor for the station assistants who get lumbered with the platform jobs, but pretty much everyone else is likely at some point or other to find themselves skulking round a television willing on whichever of the 32 nations their supervisor is supporting, in the hope that in a rash good mood he might let you go home early.

When I first started in the job the only time I was let into the ticket office was to watch the FA Cup final. Even then the supervisor was concerned enough about the managers to make me watch it sitting beneath the counter at the excess fare window.

Football matches are ideal viewing for long, dull shifts, since although they are fairly compulsive, they don't require you to watch every minute to understand what is going on. So if something does happen—a fire alarm or accident, or someone wanting to buy a ticket—it is not too much of a stretch to leave the game and return later. This constant threat of disturbance is why, incidentally, it is so hard to use the extensive longueurs to improve yourself. I once tried to expand my horizons beyond the ticket barrier by reading Dostoevsky, but after 100 pages of unfathomable Russian names and a drip-drip of passengers inconsiderately asking for things like "help," I was forced to give up and went back to staring into space.

In many stations underground, television reception can be a problem. However, with two important ingredients at hand—determination and lots of time—solutions are found up and down the network, often involving tens of metres of aerial cable, disguised as something more important.

But the World Cup, which doesn't take up much more than about four hours in a day, is not a patch on the Olympics, which pushes the boundaries of watchable yet entirely frivolous television. The Sydney games were a blessing for the night supervisors, even giving them something to stay awake for, and yet there were still lots of repeats left for us in the daytime to chew over. During Athens, events were neatly timed to begin after the morning rush-hour and continued well into the evening. In comparison, the World Cup barely scratches the surface of the boredom, especially after the group stage—there are simply too few games.

Of course, football is our national sport, and even fat, wheezing underground staff have been known to indulge in the odd kickabout. When my group organised a series of matches against a branch of the Northern line it got no further than the first game. By the end of the Saturday afternoon, three staff had booked off sick with gruesome injuries—one with multiple fractures—and the management swiftly brought down the curtain.

Some stations have to deal with hordes of football fans every time there's a match. I was always haunted by one colleague's tale of working on a station platform full of Tottenham fans as a train packed with Arsenal fans slowly wheeled into the station. After what seemed like an age, the train started to move forward without opening its doors. This is standard practice for keeping two sets of fans apart, but there was always the fear, he explained to me, that the driver would open his doors and precipitate a riot. The nearest I've come, however, is helping clueless Newcastle fans work out whether they've left their car outside Highgate or Highbury & Islington station.

But for the lowly station staff, watching the matches is getting harder. Recently the underground brought in a new policy that the ticket gates should be manned at all times. This is testament to their pragmatism, since that was also the old policy, but it was roundly ignored, especially at quieter stations where staff are used to being able to do more or less what they want. But whereas in the past there were various ways of leaving the managers with the impression that the gates were fully manned, while we clustered in the mess room, technology has been catching up with us. Many station assistants will thus find themselves eking out those tedious hours on the barrier, while the supervisor watches the football with his feet up. Of course, the underground would not be what it is without the ingenuity of its staff, so you can expect to see a few unmanned gates during the big games of the tournament.

And even if we don't get much of a chance to watch the games, sports events like the World Cup do allow us a chance to interact with the customers, beyond the usual mutual sniping. For example, when England won the rugby World Cup I stuck a piece of paper to the glass of my ticket window detailing the unlikely result. A Scots guy, fresh from buying his ticket, looked up and graciously said, "Well done, by the way." "Er, thanks," I replied, "but I can't take all the credit."