Not giving a fuck
February 4th, 2023
Disorder and a disorganized chaotic half-assed attempt was what I watched today for an hour and was progressively getting angrier and ashamed. At them and for them in person and for them for not even pretending to give a shit and fuck about the work they were doing.
I was at the train station and that itself should explain a lot. My train came to the station only a few minutes late, but as was staring at the empty track the announcement at the station was telling me that the train is already there…and there was a scheduled stop for another twenty minutes to attach several more carriages to the train. And it took more than an hour before we finally left the station. Standing on the platform I could see it all happening before my eyes. First, it took ten minutes to uncouple the engine from the train. Then the engine went to one side of the station and stood there for twenty minutes. Then the engine drove over along the platform to the other side of the station. There it waited ten minutes for another engine to bring new carriages onto the tracks. Then the original engine drove over along the platform to the other side where it waited ten minutes to switch tracks and pull over the original tracks for coupling to the rest of the train.
All that was happening when there was no other traffic and no other trains were at the station. And there were plenty of railroad workers there but they were mostly standing around or walking in the blistering cold all the while hundreds of travelers were huddling on the platform against the wind and snow. Everything along the tracks was happening in slow motion. There was absolutely zero urgency or any attempt to do the process in time. There was no consideration for the passengers as clients. There was no fuck given or even an attempt not to be so blatant about it. There were announcements after thirty minutes about the delay without any timeframe given, the train company app was showing everything on time, conductors were nowhere to be seen and when finally one showed up she simply said that she doesn’t know the reason for the delay, she doesn’t know how much longer it will be, she doesn’t know if some of the delay can be made up along the way. Pathetic unprofessional and demeaning to all the people affected by this ineptitude.
I might not know a lot about-face a lot of things but I know about logistics. That’s been my job for many years and I know what I saw today — lack of preparation, lack of organization, lack of giving a shit about customers. At any company I worked for, that lack of professionalism would never be acceptable and would be grounds for serious talking to and verbal or written warnings or possibly a dismissal. And the thing is, that would never happen in the first place. I worked with a lot of different people over the years and all of them had professional pride in the work they did. Seeing a problem and resolving it before others even know about it, and before the problem escalates is basic and the main thing that we do in logistics. There is always a plan B and a plan C, and always proactive in what we do. Here today I saw a bunch of people who just didn’t give a fuck about the work they were doing and an organization that allows it. That is simply unacceptable to me and beyond my power to understand this kind of behavior. Especially in public and especially when those actions inconvenience the paying public. Pathetic and disappointing showing really.
