Presence (or not) of staff on stations

On Christmas Eve morning my wife used the toilets at a TFL station. There was an awful mess in there which needed to be cleaned or the toilets closed. However she could not find any staff to report it to. She had a 10 minute wait for her train so stayed by the ticket barriers (which were working) but no staff appeared. We notified TFL via Twitter (the only contact details I had on my phone) but no response.

The lack of visible staff I find disappointing

"bear minimum".....does this refer to the demeanour of the staff? (as in "...with a sore head"?

On a couple of occasions now I've reported a cleaning need at Bank (both times drink spillages I've come across) by using the information point when no staff have been visible. On both occasions the response has been quick.

Bank/Monument is one of the bigger Section 12 stations so there will always be someone in the control room

Some of the TfL Rail staff are brilliant whilst others hide behind closed doors. They are supposed to be on the gate line.

Most of the quieter stations out of Liverpool Street only have agency staff after the ticket office closes.

I notice that at Shepherd's Bush Market, the ticket office still has a window with a notice: "Information Only".

There is virtually never any staff member visible (and if they are out of the office and not on the stairs/platforms [never seen one on these], they would be visible to anyone at the gate line).

You can occasionally see someone skulking back from the TO window.

Shepherd's Bush Market isn't a Section 12 station so it can be left open if unstaffed although I've been told that all the stations on the Hammersmith branch except Hammersmith itself only have a single CSS at any given time.  The ticket office probably doubles as the control room/office so they could have been handling paperwork, checking the CCTV or having their meal relief in there.

The staff at my local ticket office put up signage to tell people they are on meal breaks. At my other local station, trains often terminate there, so there is always a visible staff presence.

On a side note, I was also at Great Portland St a few weeks ago and some lovely music was being played in the background. I wish more station staff would do this.

Dagenham Heathway plays classical music, there was this whole idea a few years back that Mozart & Co reduced unsociable behaviour

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/mind-the-bach-classical-music-on-the-underground-800483.html

The best musical experience I had was back in 1999 when I was training on PEDs at Canada Water prior to the JLE opening, the station was empty apart from us and the contractors testing the PA system. The instructor explained how to smash the PEDs in an emergency to a backing track of "So What" and "Freddie Freeloader" from the 1959 Miles Davis album "Kind of Blue". Cool, Daddio....

As a Station Supervisor, let me put my thoughts and observations to the forum.

The 'Fit for the Future' plans for Station operation were trumpeted by the company as leading a step change in offering better customer service. It was all hot air, it was a cost cutting exercise plain and simple. 900 less staff would save the company £50m per year.

'Taking staff out from behind glass and putting them out onto the station' was a frequent quote from senior managers. Sounds great. So on a practical level, that meant Station control room, ticket office staff as well as the Station Supervisor. Half of the people who took voluntary severance and left early-mid 2016 were ticket office staff. Once they went, all that ticketing experience as well as experienced staff coaching new staff was gone. The company were very slow in responding to this huge loss of experience. Under the old system, ticket office trainees were given a full time 5 day course, if they passed that, they were then given 1-1 coaching with an experienced coach for 10 days. Now the training is being given a workbook, a few days with an inexperienced new coach and then you go for an assessment. Not ideal. Of the staff that do pass, a fair few fail, they are a lot less equipped to deal with ticketing issues than their colleagues in the past. The company hasn't helped themselves by not allowing staff to do certain transactions. For example, someone buys a Zone 1-3 weekly travelcard in error instead of a 1-4. The company spouts the person must contact Customer services to arrange a replacement, whereas a confident ex ticket office clerk can charge them the difference and update their Oyster. A faceless beauracrat far from the frontline issues these diktats whilst staff on the ground who are confident in dealing with it put the customer first by trying to resolve the issue there and then. The ticket offices are gone, but they still retain most of their equipment. The machines still need to be floated and serviced. The banking and collection still needs to be done.

Former Station control room staff/ticket office staff who did not take severance are now Station Supervisors, mostly in suburban stations that are in the open. On my patch at the top end of the Northern line, we lone work, a good 90% of the time. Our 'office' is usually the old ticket office. At most of the stations, We have a window that looks out onto the gate line/booking hall. We are encouraged/instructed to be on the gate line for the peak hours. Individual Supervisors may interpret peak hours as 0800-0900. Personally I do 0730-1000. We can be in the office outside the peaks but to remain in public view as much as we can. Obviously in real life this can't be the whole time. Station checks, booking on contractors, dealing with operational incidents, meal breaks as well as going to the toilet. At some Stations on my group, the Supervisors office is nowhere near the booking hall. So we might be tied up with paperwork. So it looks like the station is unstaffed, but it isn't.

Station staffing has been really cut to the bone since these plans were implemented earlier this year. Even if all the duties are covered the staffing levels are still stretched. Even in the big Zone 1 stations, staffing levels are very tight. When people go sick, or annual leave, training etc the roster falls to pieces. There's no give in the system whatsoever. At the busier stations on my group, like Finchley Central the Supervisor lone works most of the time, but on the roster has an assisting Supervisor for the peaks. This rarely happens, as the assisting Supervisor has to go and staff an unstaffed station elsewhere on the group.'Before these plans came into effect, Finchley Central had 1 Supervisor and 2 Customer service assistants to help out. Now you're on your own. We are supposed to be giving excellent customer service, dealing with inexperienced passengers who are not au fair with the system, failed Oyster cards which is time consuming as we have to call up the Oyser help desk which takes an age to get through. Whilst I'm tied up on the phone, I can't assist anyone else. We have frequent terminating trains which need to be detrained, customers being taken ill, points failing etc. I'm supposed to do all this on my own whereas 8 months ago I'd have had two staff to help me. Frequently we are pulled off our own group leaving stations unstaffed and sent to keep tunnel section stations, Section 12 Stations open. These stations have a legal minimum staffing level. Whereas open sections don't. This is happening all over the system. Papering over the cracks, filling vacancies by advertising huge amounts of overtime. Great in principle every now and again to earn a bit extra, but demoralising when you are tired and stretched to the limit and doing everything on your own. The overtime ban currently in force by RMT members just shows how much of the system relies on the goodwill of staff coming in on their rest days or coming in early or staying on.

As to the messy toilet. Recently I did a station check. The public toilets were fine. 10 minutes later, someone complained that there was graffiti on the wall, and urine all over the floor. These are the problems you face on a daily basis. The toilets at High Barnet are taken out of use fairly regularly for cleaning because 'customers' urinate all over the place... sometimes its something worse... or they like to block the toilet with tissue.

As to music, not fussed personally. Kentish Town has it and it's fairly successful in keeping the teenagers away. Although to the drunk or stoned ones, it doesn't do anything.