In message , at
14:35:16 on Sat, 24 Nov 2012, Portsmouth Rider
remarked:
Do tell us of your thoughts for the bus driver who was sitting down with his
family at home, about to watch his favourite progamme on the telly, when the
phone rang and a voice said:-

"Hi, Fred, Blakey here... fancy a bit of overtime? it'll take you ten
minutes to get into the depot, we'll have 777 ready for you with the
paperwork, just take it up to (insert some station thirty miles away) and
report to the railway people, run a shuttle up as far as Guildford, as
required, don't know what time you'll finish, we'll try and cover your
roster tommorow morning".

And it's the Freds of this world who drop what they are doing and get
thoughtless pratts like YOU home.

The thoughtless pratts are the people who think it's clever to make the
bus passengers walk a mile in the dark and the rain, rather than
dropping them off somewhere more convenient that they happened to be
passing.

To suggest this makes Fred (who isn't the only person in the world to
get asked to do unscheduled overtime - every passenger on the bus has
lost an hour of their evening too) get back home a minute or two later
is over-egging the situation to the point of absurdity. A hundred other
things might make him later too, like getting lost on the way ad having
to ask the passengers for directions.

This inflexible attitude is exactly what gives the railways such a poor
reputation, and means a lot of people won't even consider using them.
--
Roland Perry