"David Cantrell" wrote in message
. ..
On Wed, May 07, 2014 at 02:07:55PM +0200, tim..... wrote:
"David Cantrell" wrote:
True, but there will still be more helpers per customer.
(I presume that you mean, than now? - no, that can't be right. If
everybody
who was previously in the TO was now to be out front helping customers
use
the machines, there wouldn't be any scope redundancies nor any union
gripes
about people having to move locations, change shift patterns. etc)

Ah, but you're assuming that ticket office staff are currently helping
customers who need it. They're obviously not. A lot of the time they're
selling tickets instead,

I had assumed that selling a ticket at the window counted as "helping a
customer". If it isn't, what is it?

to customers who could be serving themselves
with a machine, or just not doing anything at all.

If they are (at any one point in time) doing "nothing at all, then it seems
reasonable to conclude that there are no customers waiting who can't use the
machines, so if they were outside "helping", they would still be doing
"nothing at all".

The point of contention isn't just about whether the number of "helpers" is
adequate, it was about the claim that there would be more of them.

If you meant a comparison with the number currently outside helping at a
machine then of course there will be, as that number is often zero. So that
would be a silly claim.

Of all the stations I use regularly, the only one where there is always
a queue for the ticket office is Victoria. The queue there seems to
consist mostly of tourists, who will still have their needs served by
a ticket office.

Not if it doesn't sell tickets, they won't

But at, for example, Balham, the person in the ticket
office probably spends most of his time reading a good book, because he
certainly doesn't spend it helping people while locked up in his little
room. Now, Balham already has at least one person out front, and I
expect that a lot of the time that's enough, so it makes sense to move
the person currently doing the crossword in the ticket office either to
a different shift or to a different location, so they can help people
where there are people needing help - or to get rid of them.

No-one (except the unions) is arguing that there isn't scope to downgrade TO
at "commuter" type stations.

It's the blanket "Every" TO that they disagree with

tim