by eno » Wed Apr 19, 2006 6:48 am
Don't get me wrong I have a great amount of respect for all war vets ..... but had it been Joe Bloggs retired shopkeeper it wouldn't have made even a local news programme/paper.
I once had a conversation with an Air Stewardess who had, for several years, been the chief of BA cabin crew training. Her particular forte was customer service and defusing difficult situations. I met her in the capacity of training new bus drivers in the art of keeping the customer happy.
Myself and several other old hands had been in a classroom being taught about the new ticket machines that were being introduced. We had picked up how to use the machine in minutes and spent the rest of the time listening to what was going on next door .... so much so that the instructor opened the partition and asked if we could listen in. He obviously thought we would benefit.
At the end of the session the floor was opened up for questions ....... me being the big mouth that I am gave her a senario along the lines of the airline related ones that she had been using as examples.
Rush hour bus filled to the brim with standing room only ..... 10 minutes late because of the traffic and half the passengers moaning because it's late and theirs no seats. Happy driver still smiling and attempting to be cheerful as people attempt to board ....... one passenger decides that he's going to block the drivers view to the left despite being asked to move down the bus..... the passenger gets shirty. Please tell me how you are going to A. Drive the bus and attempt to keep from running later than you already are. B. Diffuse the situation with the shirty passenger without antagonising all the other passengers. The main criteria being that most people on the bus are already late ...... and are only in your company for an average of 15 minutes rather than several hours. You have no incentives to offer to diffuse the situation and anyway it's all out of your control. You can't leave your seat and you don't have the time to use some of her techniques.
My solution ....... stop the bus refuse to move untill the passenger moves..... hopefully the other, already late, passengers take the drivers side and take control of the situation embarrassing the PITA passenger into moving. It's a gamble but you have nothing to loose as one shirty passenger is exactly the same as 100 shirty passengers.
The last resort ...... ask the problem passenger to leave the bus ..... or have him removed.
She didn't really have an answer...... I ventured that she couldn't really comment untill she had tried the job first hand ...... and that I wouldn't be presumptuious enough to comment on her skills as a stewardess without experiencing the job. I also added that I respected her ideas and experience, but that as a Stewardess her sole function was to see to the customer ...... she didn't have to fly the aircraft at the same time, take the fares and check the tickets.
Several weeks later I bumped into her again ....... whilst walking through the depot ...... she had decided to get the bus to work rather than drive, a completely new experience for her, to see first hand what it was like at peak times. Her ideas were being ammended and to cap it all she had been told that she was going to be trained for her PCV license and being sent out for 3 months on the road once she had passed.
I never saw her after that ........ I left the job a few months later... so I don't know if she stuck it out.
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