It is an “Off Peak” ticket!
Senario: Waverly Station, Edinburgh during rush hour
This time of year really seems to bring out the idiots who constantly seem to get in your way as you are trying to get somewhere but they appear to be completely oblivous to the fact they are in the way.
This time I was trying to catch my train home and the wise station staff in Edinburgh Waverly train station decided it would be a good idea to update the departure board from “the train will be ready soon” to “now boarding at platform 13″ with all of 3 minutes left before the train was due to depart. As soon at the departure board changed everyone made for the barriers, ended up bunched up like sardines, no-one was getting anywhere and those precious 180 seconds were ticking away quickly.
As people slowly managed to filter through I could see that the cause of the problem was the automatic barriers were rejecting tickets and people were having to get the station staff to let them through. With the bags that these people were carrying it was relative easy to assume they had come into town to do some Christmas shopping and as they had not come during rush hour they had bought an “off peak” ticket which does not work on the automatic barrier until after rush hour. It would probably be safe to assume that would be after around 6.30pm – 7pm so trying to use that at 6pm is obviously not going to work.
To make matters worse there was a group of 10 people who all seemed to be friends and who had appeared as if they all bought the same tickets. Each and every one of them had the same problem but yet each and every one of them had to try for themselves… just to be sure! You never know… that last ticket may decide to work!
In the end I managed to get my train but I hardly managed to get both feet in the door before the conductor started closing them.
Tags: idiot, public transport, train ticket