The officious twattery of Southeastern

The ways in which we can hate Southeastern are myriad. We are all familiar with the the overcrowded, overheated, overpriced, under-performing train service. We are all familiar with the fact that the slightest triviality can disrupt the timetable for a fortnight (I once saw a man cough on the platform and all trains were diverted to Inverness. It’s Chaos Theory in its purest form). We are all familiar with the sheer effort involved in suffering this mediocre service on a daily basis.

Then there is the officious twattery of their staff who, of course, are only following the officious twattery of their masters. I experienced this last week. I travel every morning from Grove Park station to Cannon Street and generally buy a weekly ticket from the self-service machines (anything longer than a week seems like too much of a commitment). On this particular morning the queue at the machines was long enough to put me off, so I instead went to one of the manned ticket booths and asked for a weekly train pass.

“Can I see your photocard?”

Now, I haven’t had a photocard since 2007 when I left it, along with some other wallet overspill, in a hotel room in Bordeaux. The photo on that card was me as a fresh faced 22 year old, in 1997, just about to embark upon what I thought would be a short-term job in the City. (If you’d told me then that I would still be commuting into Cannon Street - albeit from a different starting place - every morning thirteen years later I would probably have shot my own face off.) In other words, it might as well have been a picture of Alan Rickman on a unicycle because the fresh faced whippersnapper on that card looked less and less like the disgruntled and cynical thirty-something version with every passing day.

Now I honestly thought that photocards had - like punctuality and customer service - been consigned to the dustbin of commuting history. Surely? You don’t need one for the near-ubiquitous Oyster card after all. So I pointed this out to the kind gentleman behind the glass screen.

“Yes,” he blustered. “But the Oyster card is £36 a week.” I was confused by his response and wanted to point out that this utterance was apropos of nothing but a) I was short on time and b) I doubt he would have grasped basic Latin. So I dived in. I tried to reason with him.

“Yes, but the point I am trying to make is that you won’t sell me a train pass without a photocard but I can buy an Oyster card - with no photo ID needed - and board exactly the same train without it being an issue. It’s ridiculous.”

“Well, London Transport don’t care about people passing tickets around and we do.”

At this rate I was going to miss my train so I bought a return ticket instead. But this is an absurdity because even if I DID pass my weekly ticket to someone else to use, what difference does it make to anyone? (I wouldn’t do this anyway because, trapped commuter drone that I am, I actually need the damn thing to get to work and back every day like everyone else). I mean, it’s paid for isn’t it? If someone else was using it instead, by definition I could not be. This isn’t a two-for-one deal. Who’s out of pocket? No, this is nothing but officious twattery in its purest form and yet another example of why Southeastern deserve nothing but our never-ending disdain.