Where Are Your Manners?

Trams, a source of constant frustration and anger on my daily commute. Even Metrolink couldn't be blamed for this mornings feelings.

I get on the tram at one of its last stops towards Manchester and most days am lucky to get on let alone get a seat (something for a future post I feel) Today wasn't too bad, I could get on and had room to breath. A pregnant lady got on at the same stop as me and of I noticed she was expecting than she must be quite far on!

Did anybody offer this lady their seat when she got on? No of course not. This was made worse firstly by people looking up from their seats, seeing her condition and doing nothing. Secondly when somebody did get off and a seat became free a young lady who was busy reading her Kindle and supping on her coffee dived on the seat. A priory seat for those "disabled, pregnant or less able to stand" no less!

Without sounding like the old man my wife says I'm turning into when I was a kid somebody old, pregnant etc got on and there wasn't a seat people would be climbing over other to offer one. Don't get me wrong I do occasionally see people offer their seat but this morning was a joke.

Yes maybe I or one of my fellow passengers should have said something. But would you have? Would the lady in question want somebody fighting her battles for her? I believe the onus is on the people sitting down to be getting up and offering their seat.

I'm not going to offer any reasons for any this happened or any social commentary on its causes, that is for another blogger to tackle. All I know is what I saw and how it made me feel.

Next time you are on public transport take a look about; it's there somebody else stood up who could use your seat?

A please and thank you wouldn't go a miss either.

Social Media - The Big Man Strikes Again

The BBC recently wrote a piece about social media and airing your gripes with companies in the public domain.

People who know me, know I use Twitter quite a lot and a number of these Tweets are directed at companies or organisations I'm not happy with. Though there are a number of positive ones too.

The article did get me thinking: yes I'm getting replies to my Tweets and quickly too (fifteen minutes for Virgin Money to reply yesterday) but do the responses have any substance to them?

Once again it looks like the big corporations are faceless and full of corporate bull shit. Take the exchange with Virgin Money below:




They don't actually say anything do they? No explanation as to why my ISA rate has dropped twice in the past few months, just batted me away. Somebody somewhere in VM's head office can strike my mention off as dealt with. Hope you get your bonus AD as I'm sure it's coming from my lower interest rate!

Tesco and Transport for Greater Manchester are others who Tweet a lot but say nothing, are you seeing a trend here? Replies are meaningless corporate speak so any outsider will see mentions have been dealt with, or at the very least replied to.

What I have found is that smaller organisations tend to have a more personal responses. I Tweeted Oldham Council it took them a couple of hours to get back to me but they had put a call into the appropriate department to get an answer for me.

I've come to the conclusion that complaining via social media is in the most part gets little or no meaningful response from the "big boys" because it's just a group of faceless graduates on £18k a year dealing with hundreds of mentions. They must have stock responses for every occasion.

The smaller organisations take the time to reply with some thought, it might take them longer but I'd rather have a reply in a day that is useful than one in five minutes that says nothing. The problem is in this day and age everything has to be now.

Is this going to stop me Tweeting the big boys and letting them and the world know what I think? No because I might be Tweeting at the company but for the most part I'm more concerned that the rest of the world knows what I think of these organisations.