Great Portland Street - Customer Communications

This post relates to my personal experiences yesterday evening at specific stations on the London Underground. It is intended to be an illustration of the sort of thing that happens day in, day out, across the system. It is not a complaint about any individual or team of individuals who may or may not have been responsible.*

Station 1 (Great Portland Street)

• Automated announcement (female voice) "A normal service is operating on all London Underground lines"
• Recorded announcement (male voice) "Due to engineering works, Great Portland street Station will be closed after 10pm..."
• Automated announcement (female voice) "Due to staff shortages, delays are reported between xxx and xxx on the Hammersmith & City Line"
• Automated announcement (female voice) "A normal service is operating on all London Underground lines"
• Westbound dot-matrix train describers "Train 1: Delayed, Train 2: Delayed"
• Train then arrives.

Station 2 (Baker Street) Two minutes later

• Announcement by platform staff "Delays are occurring on the Hammersmith & City and Circle Lines. Mind the doors."

Station 3 (Edgware Road) Four minutes later

• Comment to member of station staff "Having fun tonight?"
• Response "Allow extra time for your journey tomorrow morning, it will be worse." I will not repeat the next sentence, but it referred to a member of staff and the item within which Father Christmas often carries Christmas presents.

This morning's status on the tfl website "HAMMERSMITH & CITY LINE: Minor delays are occurring due to non-availability of staff. Message received 05:59am"

1. The automated lady at GPS was clearly being inconsistent, at best, with her status announcements.
2. Do we think that 'der management' on the H&C line may be experiencing a bit of a problem with industrial relations?

*Why the big disclaimer. Simply because I wouldn't want to upset one of my regular readers... you know who you are!