Semantici.st

A warning, gentle reader: this post is filed in the category ‘swear-filled ranting’. When I say ‘swear-filled’, I don’t mean I say ‘gosh-darned’ a lot. My goal here is The Thick Of It-level swearing. This particular post is the result of First Scotrail deciding that trains don’t need to run on time or finish their route, and that it’s fine to not actually tell passengers that the train they’re sitting on has been cancelled until after the doors have been locked and the conductor has left. I’ve written them a letter expressing my incandescent rage.

Dear Corpsefuckers,

This week I’ve had the misfortune of being completely fucked over by your incompetent malicious conductors. Again. On Monday the 14th of December I scurried along to Inverkeithing train station to get the 0914 to Newcraighall.

As is normal for this train it arrived at some random made-up time which bore little resemblance to the schedule I and my fellow commuters rely on to get to work on time and not be collectively anally raped by our various bosses. I know that these little 10 minute delays with no announcements at the station are your way of expressing your love, but I’m not interested in a BDSM relationship with a fucking train company.

Eventually the train arrived at Waverley, and I was concerned at first that it would stop there, since you cunting bastards appear to take great joy in arriving late and then fucking me over even more by not actually going to the end of the line. This leaves me either waiting until the next train (a clue: if the next train was suitable for getting to work without getting arsefucked by my boss, I would just stay in bed longer and get it every fucking morning) or taking the bus across Edinburgh – which takes three times longer than the train and still leaves me needing to clean lube stains out of my underwear.

After all the lucky fucks who get to work in Edinburgh got off the train, the conductor walked past on the platform, pulling a bag behind him. He looked through the window of the train directly at me and I feel that we shared a moment. I took away from this moment comfort in the knowledge that while my train was late and clearly a bit broken, the conductor was aware that I was on board and as he’d seen my ticket to Newcraighall and made no announcement that the train was cancelled, I was safe to sit back and proceed to my destination. Unfortunately for me, what the useless turdbucket conductor took away was the smug knowledge that he was fucking up some poor shit’s day. He hurried off down the platform, presumably eager for a cup of tea and a quick wank.

As he went out of sight, the doors automatically closed – and locked. A few minutes later the train moved forward – for about three feet, and then stopped. I sat on your train, locked and unable to leave, with no fucking clue what was happening for several more minutes. As each precious second of my life ticked by I decided that there were only two main options:

1. Scotrail have decided to fuck me again by not running the Newcraighall train to Newcraighall.
2. I’ve been secretly selected for a new reality TV show where I’m left trapped in a train until my mind finally breaks and I start to gnaw away at my own fingers until all I have left are bloody stumps.

I was actually fairly prepared for the second option, having with me a book of H. P. Lovecraft short stories and a long-standing habit of biting my fingernails, but it wasn’t that. I expect you’re saving it for after the New Year.

Thankfully for what little is left of my sanity, you’d just decided that it’s not actually important to take paying passengers to their actual destinations. I understand that in this case the bucket of rust on wheels you use for trains had crapped out, but this happens every three months or so, usually when the train is running late, usually for no obvious reason. It’s even happened when the train was exactly on time – in that case it was announced and then unannounced by the conductor prior to arriving in Waverley. I guess he really was desperate for his tea and wank that day!

What’s the fucking point of a fucking train service that doesn’t fucking go to the fucking destination? I don’t buy a ticket to ‘somewhere near Newcraighall’ – I buy a ticket to Newcraighall. If you can’t manage to do this, you need to step away from your franchise and go get some wooden train sets from the Early Learning Centre until you’re competent enough to graduate to Hornby 00. Maybe by the time the Sun has dropped off of the main sequence and turned into a giant ball of flaming gas which has consumed the entire fucking planet you’ll be ready to manage an actual train network.

In fairness, while the high-viz jacketed goon on the platform clearly didn’t give a fuck when I asked about the next train to Newcraighall, the guy who actually rescued me from the locked train did seem genuinely surprised anyone was on board and was perfectly polite, helpful, and considerate. This was also my experience the last time one of your knuckle-dragging cavemen conductors got me locked into a train by telling a driver that his train was empty and to go directly to the depot (this was on a train from Newcraighall to Haymarket, at around 2000 on Friday the fifth of June). After running up and down the six-carriage train trying to find the absent conductor, I managed to get to the driver’s door shortly before he left for the night. The driver there was absolutely mortified that his conductor had royally fucked him, and I wasn’t terribly upset. I was on my way home on a nice summer’s day and it gave me a nice anecdote for Monday morning.

Perhaps that’s some advice you can pass down to the ‘front lines’ – people are far more likely to put up with your massive incompetence on nice summer evenings than they are on cold winter mornings when they’re trying to get to work on time. Maybe you can give all the useless fucks six months leave during the winter, and make them do double-shifts all summer? It’s not like the sleep deprivation will make them any worse, and it’ll give your many members of staff that are actually competent more time off in the summer to enjoy the moderately nice weather with their families.

In the meantime, I’m going to follow the suggestion of a colleague at work and investigate the feasibility of a giant zip-line all the way from Inverkeithing to Musselburgh. I’m sure that it would be no less inconvenient a transport method than having to rely on First Scotrail.

Angrily,

John Daniels