Training for hours

Still better here

I would still contend after my experience of getting to work this morning that train travel in the Netherlands is still considerably better than travelling in the UK.

Cost, comfort, convenience and consideration are keys elements of why that service here is better, I have not had to travel 1^st class and share my leg room with a German shepherd dog or seen my full price ticket completely devalued by an announcement that anyone could upgrade with a paltry GBP 10 supplement.

However, when the trains get messed up in the Netherlands, they really do get messed up big time.

That 7:57 jinx

I have the choice of 2 direct trains to Apeldoorn from Amsterdam at 7:27 and 7:57 every morning; I prefer the first and sometimes end up on the second which also means I am able to pick up the morning paper without stress.

Looking back over 12 weeks of making this journey, I think the 7:57 seems to have the most problems, it is probably jinxed, I only have problems with this train being cancelled, the journey cut short, the train delayed and sometimes it takes 50% longer to get to my destination.

If I did my assessment of train services based on the 7:57 to Enschede which calls at Hilversum, Amersfoort and Apeldoorn my stop, and to other stations beyond, I could conclude that the service in the Netherlands is absolutely rotten, unreliable, and inefficient, below par and not value for money.

The fat train can’t move

Today, I got the 7:57 train and just managed to get a seat, something seemed to be wrong and how right I was, the train had fewer coaches that most people were standing, in fact, a lady or rather a woman was sitting on the floor. Perhaps, if it were a lady, chivalry would have allowed to give her a seat.

An announcement was made which had an excuse and an apology that the train is so full and advised people to get off at the next stop and catch that later train.

There are usually 2 stops to my destination – Hilversum and Amersfoort, but a few minutes later, another announcement expressed the danger in travelling on such a fully laden train; the fact that speed limits would be lower and hence cause backlogs for other trains – we were told we would all have to get off at a minor stop - Weesp, take a stopping train to Hilversum, then board another stopping train to Amersfoort and then change for one going on to Apeldoorn and further.

The colder breeze of Amersfoort

When I took the stopping train from Hilversum to Apeldoorn, I had to stand and even suffer the discomfort of standing in the rudimentary class carriages to an intermediate stop.

So, when I should have arrived in Apeldoorn at 9:04, I was waiting for the connecting service from Amersfoort which would have left at 9:10 but was running 15 minutes late.

In the middle of November, the weather is hardly sunny and warm so one would expect a short wait in the station waiting rooms only to find that some bird-brained idiot had allowed for a full floor buffing service in the middle of the rush-hour on a cold November morning.

We all had to stand outside for the 20 minutes it took for the train to arrive and it was just coasting 7ºC – Brrrrrrgh!

Red lighting taxi

I finally got to Apeldoorn at about 9:50 and took a taxi to the office which was without event till I had to upbraid the driver for running a red light – “That was a very bad thing to do”, I said, he laughed it off and much as it resulted in a cheaper fare, what is the cost of getting caught if it really went wrong?

I cannot bear to think of the consequences, but work resumes with the dramas that makes you feel you could not find a better place to get stressed out.

It is going to be a fine day – at the races.

AKO is hardly the best at rush hour

Shopping time for the commuter

In the commuter world, the station is a place where everyone should appreciate the context of time and the instant gratification required by customers to get in, grab something, catch the train and relax in a seat fiddling with whatever was acquired.

I have however come to the conclusion that many shops in Amsterdam Central Station have no idea of the setting in which they are based.

The shops may very well know they have a market but they do not understand their customers, the characteristics of shops in the high street are quite different from those in a train station and very different from those in an airport.

The psyche of a shop

In the high street, you have time to browse and flit around in perpetual indecision till you end up with something really expensive that you never really needed.

When you shop at the airports, the purchases could be impulsive or based on the need to acquire gifts for those back at home – you may not have as much time, but you would hardly be in a panicky rush to get on your plane, except where you do not arrive on time to check-in, in which case you would hardly be shopping.

Corner shops or late night shops are a different genre; they are open until just that time when ghosts have finished putting on their makeup; they are that last refuge to interact with retailers because you have missed the regular shops and just need a quick TV dinner or something that prepares you for the next body engine trouble.

Rush-hour in tardy shops

When in comes to station shops, it requires a completely different mindset and business model – those shops are in premium rent areas, the customers hardly have the time and they definitely want prompt and efficient service, at least, that is my opinion.

For three days now as I have half-rushed to catch my train to work in the rush-hour at because of the newsagents in the station, the experience has left me quite seriously annoyed.

First off all, these newsagents has three shops in the station and somehow have failed to get it right for all sorts of reasons.

A Knock Off

For the want of controversy, AKO [Source: AKO.nl - Online boeken bestellen – In Dutch, the online site of the store] which prides itself as the best bookshop in the Netherlands seems to be failing in its prime purpose at Amsterdam Central Station.

It is almost unimaginable that at 8:00AM in the thick of the rush hour the all the newspapers are yet to be stacked up, at the most accessible store at the East side of the station, half the papers are still on the trolley in cellophane wrapping and chance has it that the one I want is in the pile.

One can go to the West side but the queues are just interminably long, with much more variety, the choices are their to keep you there for longer than it healthy for your heart; further down near Platform 14, the papers are staked up but the price scanner cannot read the barcode, forget the queues, they are long too.

Poor staff management

It is absolute chaos at times, as you find staff that should be at the tills doing other things around the shop and the queues stretch out into the concourse – I would presume the customers have another hour before their train.

In my case, I only have minutes and by the time one has walked to perimeter of the station for what should have been available 10 metres from the entrance of the station, one is almost running for the train – it is utterly beyond the pale.

The other day, they put a greenhorn on the till, he spent minutes charging the wrong price and giving out excess change along with his obvious state of discomfiture, I heard enough of the Dutch in the customer’s frustration when he cursed about how they could have put an inexperienced lad on the tills in the rush-hour.

I do wonder if these stores realise that people who pick up a newspaper really have no time for food parcel queues – in fact, I have seen setups in London where on trust people are able to use a paper dispenser, saving time for them to catch their trains with dignity.

Today, it was the Platform 14 store, a queue 10 deep and just one till available whilst the other staff were stacking shelves with non-essentials, I just could not wait 10 or more minutes to pay for the paper so I put it back.

They can sort this thing out

I am incensed that I ended up having to travel an hour without my paper just because there are three shops in the station that cannot seem to be managed properly with a clear knowledge of their setting.

These shops probably have to open earlier to stack up their shelves in time, they definitely need to have staff manning all the available tills in the rush-hours, the greenhorns should only do the quiet hours, in the meantime they can be stacking shelves if necessary and the prices of all major international newspapers should appear on a price board, just in case the scanner cannot decipher the barcode.

Thankfully, I am not the regional manager of that group of stores, else a good few heads included mine might have rolled for what is just gross incompetence and the lack of attention to the possibility that customer impatience could have lost them a good deal of business.