Re: Country(link?) - try walking instead

["Dave Proctor" <daproc@sd5.mailbank.com>]

Hi David,

David Johnson <trainman@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
381F3705.4818CC64@ozemail.com.au">news:381F3705.4818CC64@ozemail.com.au...

> One day, the knockers in this group will see just how horrible some
customers
> can be to the staff, and then understand their attitudes. I could give
> multitudes of examples, but very few of you would believe just how bad
some
> people can be.

Most of the people in this newsgroup know this, and accept it.

But the point that has been made, repeatedly, is that members of the general
public really don't care about that - all they perceive is obnoxious and
arrogant staff, and it turns them off the whole travelling experience.

I managed to convince a group of tennis umpires to use the XPT sleepers to
travel from SYD to MEL for the 1999 Australian Open - these people did not
drink, stayed pretty much in the sleeping compartments, were in no way rude
to the staff. Yet they all complained that the OB staff were obnoxious. (I
did not notice it, perhaps I have gotten used to it.)

These are people who paid adult first class fares (the tournament was
reimbursing us, so we did not care how much we spent). These are the sort of
passengers that Countrylink can not afford to lose.

Of those 10 tennis umpires, 8 of them have decided to fly down this year -
there on board experience was a factor in their decision not to go by train
this time around. So Countrylink misses out on $288 from 8 people (at D40
rates), a total of $2304.

--
DaveProctor
thadocta AT dingoblue.net.au