There’s nothing I like more than a snooze on the train on the way to work. I think I deserve it, I get up at 5am and it takes me two hours (door to door) to get to work, one hour fifteen minutes of which is spent at the mercy of Iarnród Éireann (pronounced Ear-in Road Air-inn and directly translated means Iron road Ireland, or Irish Rail, now enough of the cultural nonsense, they’re pissing me off again!). I’ve just sent them a letter.
Customer Relation Department
Northern and Eastern
Iarnród Éireann
Conolly Station
Amien Street
Dublin 1
9th January 2008
Re: Downgrade of the 6.04am service Drogheda/Dublin in 2008.
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to ask you why the quality of the above service has grossly deteriorated in the first week of 2008.
Before the start of this year, this service was a comfortable one where one could relax and more importantly, given the time of the morning it is, nap for a while and upon arrival at Dublin Pearse station feel refreshed and ready to begin work. So far this year though, this has not been the case. The type of carriage that is now on this service is one of the older (sub-standard in my opinion) carriages.
This type of carriage does not have the usual ergonomically designed individual seats, instead it comprises of the two seater bench seats, which look more at home on a 1970’s school bus than on a twenty first century commuter train in what is considered as being the richest country of the EU. Falling asleep on this type of seat is impossible.
I implore you to restore this service to its former standard, for the sake of my health, the well being of my work colleagues, who are starting to feel the brunt of my non-sleep, for the sake of human decency and, seeing as you have just increased the fare by 5% from today, purely out of respect for your customers who have no other choice but to use this service every day to get to work. I look forward to hearing from you on this matter.
Yours faithfully,
Jack McMad
As usual, I bet I don’t hear anything from them.
