A bit of a difficult day. I was at least at a fairly busy station, but having gone in feeling fairly miserable after a lot of personal-life aggravation, even a cabride from Cockfosters couldn't cheer me up much, and I was apparently "abrupt" with the Station Supervisor, or so she told me later after I'd turned down about the fifth enquiry about whether I'd like a break. (Admittedly not all from her, some were from the CSA on the turn overlapping with mine.) While she was probably right - I'd never worked with her before and I'm *not* good with people until I've worked with them a few times - the fact that neither she nor the CSA on duty bothered to tell me that several of the gates were malfunctioning (and one had been doing so for several days) until I'd already been out on the gateline working for about half an hour didn't help. (Of course I soon discovered that they weren't working - what I didn't know was what resets had been performed, whether jobs were out on them, the exact nature of the problem - ie, were the gates working entry and not exit, or neither, or...?)

Turning down the breaks I actually did five hours (and, naughtily, a bit) straight through without a single break which was what my mind needed to clear it a bit, and I was greatly helped by the appearance of a CSA who was working the next station along, who had come to tell me that she had passed her interview for train operator. She's one of the few people I find it very easy to be friendly with and to talk to, and she's always really nice when she does on-shift visits like this, helping out and opening the manual gate if I'm helping someone else and so on.

Not so good incident - turned a 'customer' away who had a ticket between two mainline stations with no Underground validity, and possibly an incorrect date... having noticed that it wasn't valid route-wise I hadn't paid much attention to the date, but I think it was October 5th. While this is a situation where discretion could be applied, for example someone changing a route at the last minute, or problems on the overground, he very blatantly was trying to blag his way through, demanding I open the gate for him before he'd even produced a ticket. I told him, in rather politer language, to buy a valid ticket or sod off, and he left, sticking his head round a wall to shout a few swearwords and insults. Nice chap.

I also had to explain to a woman that she couldn't use her freedom pass to get all the way to Doncaster, and she gave me a really pissed off look, as if she were entitled to free travel everywhere in the whole country and who was I to say her nay?

We had loads of people getting stuck in gates - not helped by the malfunctions - and the number of people caught out by the early last train times due to it being Sunday was insane.

Thankfully the night supervisor was one I get along with fairly well and we spent some time playing with the gates before the last westbound went, and then there was just the long wait for the last east, which was thankfully roughly on time.