An Open Letter to Southern

To whom it may concern, (if there are any employees even left working for the company).

One understands the right of employees to strike action.
 One understands the current dispute between drivers and guards.
One most certainly understands the issues of buttons being pressed...*solemn, exasperated laughter follows*

Truly, one understands that not everything goes one's way in life and sometimes hiccups do occur.

 However, what one intolerably does not understand is your company's prolonged and irritating - nay - farsical response to the current situation. It has gone beyond an industrial dispute and it has gone on long enough.

 It is damaging your customers in a threefold manner: financially with the burgeoning and burdening cost of train travel; emotionally with the strain of trying to get home to frustrated families and, in some sad cases, entire livelihoods where some employees have lost their jobs due to the shockingly unreliable commuter services.

This would be enough for anyone to tear their hair out.

Yet it gets worse...Southern services are poor even when they do run at all.

My most recent journey was delayed by 35 minutes (bad enough). When a platform was finally announced, customers hurtled towards it like sheep for the slaughter. One alighted the train and begrudgingly used the toilet facilities which were both unclean and without toilet paper or paper towels. Hellish.
It seems my nightmarish journey through the nine circles of hell was one of the luckier ones...other services were cancelled due to a "lack of drivers". Sometimes, there are just no words...

One can attempt to empathise with the perspective of a company such as yours...it is a truth that customers can be pedantic,  petulant and downright petty. A small few think they deserve to dine with a silver spoon and sit upon a golden cushion - (but if you want that, its first class for you if you can fork out the fiendish fares).

At the end of the day (because that's how long it takes your 7am commute to arrive) what most of us desire is a reliable service to get us to our intended destination without too many problems along the way. Is that really so much to ask?

Yours despairingly,

Ms D. Layd.