Automation is causing many casualties. Technology marches on, but there’s a yearning for moments of precious connection, says Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff
Ticket staff in the UK don’t work 24/7. I used to work at a very large railway station in the UK and the ticket office was only open for 12 hours a day and only fully staffed at peak times, and employed the lowest paid staff in the station. (I’m guessing because you talk of railroads and dimes you probably don’t live in the UK, we’d be talking about railways and pennies here). The proposal is not to remove ticket staff at major stations, but at the minor ones, and there just aren’t that many staff at all the minor stations put together. Allied with the penalty fare system and the general unreliability of the ticket machines, and neither ticket machines nor guards on trains taking cash any more, having the busier smaller stations unstaffed is going to take mobility away from the most vulnerable.
Many ticket machines are not fit for use either - some of the ones on GWR for instance (of which lamentably I have first hand experience) have some of the buttons so close together on the touch screen they are a challenge to operate even by a young person with perfect eyesight and eye/hand coordination.
The drop in the ocean saved won’t lead to any meaningful improvements.
They aren’t sitting there twiddling their thumbs for 12 hours, they are providing a service which evidently people value. “Savings are savings” is the kind of argument an accountant who knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing would make.
We’re talking about the cost a human being sitting around selling tickets to people. You can value that service all day long, but if the human being is wasting their life doing something a machine could do you’re literally wasting human life.
If a job can be killed. Replace it. This isn’t about money, money is a proxy for what actually matters. Time and resources.
Human potential far surpasses selling you tickets, and any human potential wasted in this way is a tragedy.
The ticket office staff don’t merely sell tickets - and I know because I’ve done the job - much of the job is assisting people in a way a machine still cannot.
Ticket staff in the UK don’t work 24/7. I used to work at a very large railway station in the UK and the ticket office was only open for 12 hours a day and only fully staffed at peak times, and employed the lowest paid staff in the station. (I’m guessing because you talk of railroads and dimes you probably don’t live in the UK, we’d be talking about railways and pennies here). The proposal is not to remove ticket staff at major stations, but at the minor ones, and there just aren’t that many staff at all the minor stations put together. Allied with the penalty fare system and the general unreliability of the ticket machines, and neither ticket machines nor guards on trains taking cash any more, having the busier smaller stations unstaffed is going to take mobility away from the most vulnerable.
Many ticket machines are not fit for use either - some of the ones on GWR for instance (of which lamentably I have first hand experience) have some of the buttons so close together on the touch screen they are a challenge to operate even by a young person with perfect eyesight and eye/hand coordination.
The drop in the ocean saved won’t lead to any meaningful improvements.
That’s still plenty of time. “It won’t save much compared to…” Is almost always a bad argument. Savings are savings and labor is expensive.
The ticket machines not being up to the task is a reasonable argument though. I can’t comment on that.
They aren’t sitting there twiddling their thumbs for 12 hours, they are providing a service which evidently people value. “Savings are savings” is the kind of argument an accountant who knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing would make.
We’re talking about the cost a human being sitting around selling tickets to people. You can value that service all day long, but if the human being is wasting their life doing something a machine could do you’re literally wasting human life.
If a job can be killed. Replace it. This isn’t about money, money is a proxy for what actually matters. Time and resources.
Human potential far surpasses selling you tickets, and any human potential wasted in this way is a tragedy.
The ticket office staff don’t merely sell tickets - and I know because I’ve done the job - much of the job is assisting people in a way a machine still cannot.