On the way to uni today I sat at the front of the train as it was empty. After sitting down and getting down to some work on my PowerBook the ticket officer came along and asked to see my ticket. I gave it to him and he told me that I couldn’t sit there. I asked why and he said that it was a first class seat. I looked around and saw that the headrests had white sheets velcroed to them with “First Class” on them. He told me that they are “cracking down on people travelling in the first class section without the appropriate tickets” and he also told me that they will be able to fine you £1,000 on the spot for sitting there!

I was genuinely surprised that they still have a first class section. I asked the ticket officer how much first class tickets cost, he told me that they were 75% more than standard tickets. Todays ticket cost £10.10 so it would have cost around £17.50 for me to have a white sheet on the headrest. That’s all you get for the extra £7.50 a white cloth behind your head!

After I had moved seats people got on at every stop and sat in the first class section and every time the ticket inspector moved them back down the carriage. So in the end the main section of the carriage was crowded and the first class section was empty. What a waste of space.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2004 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Rant-O-Rama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.