Originally Posted by fbgdavidson
I remember those pink things! I used to catch the train to London when I was a scamp with my mother and bro and it was only £1 to upgrade. We got on at Basingstoke and found the carraige rammed in standard class. Found our way up to the First carriage and there was a rather pompous woman in the aisle standing in that noisy bit by the door who said, 'Only First up there'. I remember my mother smiling with no word as we walked down the aisle, this daft woman repeating her words, shouting as we got further away.....
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Without wanting to take the railway stories too far off track, I used to take the Gatwick Express up to Victoria quite a lot. I had an economy ticket bought for me, but sometimes if it were busy I'd choose to upgrade at the ticket counter to First.
One time I hadn't had time to upgrade at the counter, so tried to upgrade on the train. "No, no" said Jobsworth train-conductor. "You don't have a valid ticket to buy an upgrade on the train. Off to cattle with you..." (Or some such). And, head held low, I made my way down to the back of the train.
A few weeks later, I found myself in First again (this time with correct ticket) and found myself sat next to a couple whose ticket was marked "Not valid on Gatwick Express". I know this because I heard them discuss it when they got onto the Gatwick Express - and decided to do nothing about it.
"Oh dear!" I thought as the same Mr Jobsworth-conductor appeared once the train had departed. "You're for it now!". But oh no, Mr Conductor couldn't be nicer... "People make mistakes. It's obvious people like you wouldn't do something like that! Just don't tell anyone... " (etc etc). I think it was made worse by the couple giving it the old: "We just didn't realise" story when I knew full well they had!
The looks the couple gave me as I pointed out their deliberate scam while berating jobsworth for embarrassing me while letting others off still haunt me to this day.