As a psychologist I am very observant to peoples’ behaviour and so often I notice situations getting out of hand when a different approach would have had a more favourable result. Whilst travelling to

London by train last night, the train manager got into a bit of a confrontation with a passenger who was sat in 1^st class and didn’t have a first class ticket.   Rather than to use more calming and polite language, the train manager interrupted someone on the phone (he had done the same with me earlier, which I found very rude) and insisted on seeing the correct ticket.  Once he saw a standard class ticket, he was insistent that the passenger move right away, even though he was on the phone throughout and so not able to concentrate.  

A better option, which I see from many train managers, is to ask the passenger if they realise they are in 1^st, to give them an option to buy an upgrade, and then ask them to move, but to give them time to get their bags together.  This little incident resulted in two really grumpy men which would probably impact on other relationships with people that night whereas to have handled things more sensitively everyone would have been happier in their relations with others and with themselves.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 22nd, 2007 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Social Skills. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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