Date:	2007-04-21 10:01
Subject:	Late Night Working
Security:	Public
Mood:	tired

Another lovely late turn evening in North London.  At least, I think it's North London.  I still have no sense of where most Tube stations are in relation to anything above ground... but judging by the direction I travel, and the postcodes, I'm sure it's North.

We had quite a few people asking the way to Alexandra Palace; having now visited the website, it appears some DJ or the other was playing there overnight.  The night Supervisor was muttering things about padlocking the station gates shut so they couldn't get in before first train. 

We seemed to have way more people than usual who couldn't grasp the concept of red crosses and green arrows.  Obviously if a gate is showing a red cross, it means it's either closed, or set to the opposite direction you're trying to use.  Green arrow ones are open or set in your direction.  But the number of people who kept angrily trying to push their ticket through or get their Oyster to beep - in a few cases even after someone had come through in the other direction! - was astounding. 

Unfortunately to complicate matters two of our gates weren't accepting paper tickets.  One was taking them in and then spitting them out with a "damaged" code and refusing to open the gate, the other just plain wouldn't take them in - it does that a lot.  We could really do with signs that go over the paper ticket slots in these cases because, despite the fact that the majority of customers nowadays seem to have Oyster cards, something about those two gates was like a honeytrap to paper ticket holders...

I spent an hour during the evening peak doing SATS, although I had to break off twice, the first to meet a VIP - visually impaired person - from a train on the other platform, and the second time to meet some tea and coffee from a train on the other platform.  Seriously.  Apparently management sent it through ready for the weekend, since most of our group is closed.  Unfortunately I have the pleasure of working at one of the two open stations today and tomorrow, and it's not even the terminus station, so apart from possibly having a larger volume of people coming out for buses, we shouldn't be too badly affected.  But we'll see. 

We had some lovely bloke mouthing off at the ticket office staff because he got given a fiver that had (oh NOES!) a tiny bit of sellotape at the top to stop it tearing further.  In my last job I was frequently given notes that were fully taped together, or even *weren't* taped together, just handed to me in two pieces... it certainly wasn't worth the attitude he took.  He sealed his fate by using some disgusting language, after which the supervisor refused to do anything much for him since he'd been giving verbal.

At about 10 I had a chap come over to me saying his face was numb and asking for an ambulance.  I sat him down outside the supervisor's office and got the supervisor out to deal with it, and soon after I had to go up to meet the ambulance at the Rendez-vous Point, which was the first time I'd had to do so, so that was fun.  There didn't seem to be anything much wrong with the bloke - the ambulance crew didn't appear to be overly concerned anyway.

Now time to go pounce my partner so we can actually have a decent lunch before I have to trudge off.