Notes From Underground

Notes From Underground: Cannabis

01 July 2005 By Dan Kuper 1

When I first applied to work for the underground they sent me to Lisson Grove job centre to take reading, writing and map-reading tests. As this dragged on all morning, I became extremely bored, which, I later came to realise, was the most relevant test for the job. Those of us certified fit were signed up for our interviews and medicals and, to our horror, drug tests.

This hadn't been mentioned on the poster, which had said £16,000pa and not much else, and some of my potential colleagues had trouble believing it.

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Notes From Underground: Bomb

01 August 2005 By Dan Kuper 1

"All the staff have remained very calm," a customer told my colleague on the evening of the bombings.

"We were expecting it," he told her.

The best trailed terrorist attack in history finally arrived. The predicted horror, terror and grief were all present and correct. I have written before that the worst kind of disruption to the tube is a suicide. How much worse is three suicides, all with explosives attached?

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Notes From Underground: Race

01 December 2005 By Dan Kuper 1

This piece had the honour of being reprinted in a schoolbook to teach children about race issues and suchlike. Alas I have no idea what the book was called nor how the children did in their racial awareness exams

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Notes From Underground: Love

01 January 2006 By Dan Kuper 1

"How much do you get paid basic?" I asked my supervisor after he'd shown me a wage slip bulging with overtime.

"I don't know," he admitted.

Overtime addiction is a common—although controversial—phenomenon on the underground. The unions hate it, since it allows the managers to get away with understaffing, but their married male members love it since it keeps them away from their wives.

I wondered what my supervisor's wife thought of him never being home, but he maintained she was unconcerned. "I don't see her much even when I'm there."

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Notes From Underground: Unions

01 February 2006 By Dan Kuper 1

The London Underground doesn't set the standard for much, but it boasts perhaps the worst post-Thatcher industrial relations in Britain. Led by old-style bruiser Bob Crow, the RMT is still very much a beer and sandwiches union, give or take the sandwiches. Its take-no-prisoners attitude to strike action has earned it a somewhat ambivalent relationship with the travelling public.

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Notes From Underground: Clerks

01 April 2006 By Dan Kuper 1

In the old days, the station staff and the ticket clerks lived in parallel universes. The station railmen were in the NUR (later the RMT) and used to work polishing the brasswork, sweeping the platforms and pocketing the excess fares. The clerks, by contrast, worked inside poky offices, joined an association (the TSSA), and behaved generally as though they were a cut above the railmen by virtue of the fact that they could read and add up and weren't pissed all the time. They were also paid significantly more money.

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Notes From Underground: Football

01 July 2006 By Dan Kuper 0

The underground and the World Cup could be a match made in heaven. Not for the drivers, who obviously have to drive, nor for the station assistants who get lumbered with the platform jobs, but pretty much everyone else is likely at some point or other to find themselves skulking round a television willing on whichever of the 32 nations their supervisor is supporting, in the hope that in a rash good mood he might let you go home early.

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Notes From Underground: Power cut

01 August 2006 By Dan Kuper 0

After another struggle with my bed, I get into work to see Marcus, the early-turn ticket clerk, standing outside the ticket barrier in a high-visibility vest and the ticket office closed. What's going on? It takes a minute to sink in, since I'm still thinking of a decent excuse for being late, but then it dawns on me—the ticket office is closed. The problem is defective lighting—a minor electrical fault, it seems, but it could be a few hours before it's sorted out. What better gift could I have expected than this surprise respite from the rush-hour pummel?

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Notes From Underground: Feedback

01 September 2006 By Dan Kuper 1

Your public loves you!

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Notes From Underground: Language

01 September 2006 By Dan Kuper 1

The underground has an incredible repertoire of stock phrases. More or less the entire history of the world can be boiled down and written on one of those whiteboards you see at the entrance to tube stations. Each one of these phrases, such as "passenger action" or "severe delays," has—or at least is supposed to have—a fairly exact meaning. But the public tends to have completely the wrong idea about what that meaning is.

Prospect magazineNotes From Underground