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Some MBTA workers don't seem to realize people in wheelchairs can hear them just fine
By adamg on Sat, 07/18/2009 - 8:22pm
Megan Johnson was on a Green Line trolley stuck between Hynes and Copley for an hour during this afternoon's MBTAfail. She reports what happened when A T workger got on board and told everybody they'd have to walk through the tunnel to the station:
... [She] loudly yelled to passengers, "Okay, people! We are going to have you get off the train and walk" and then after recognizing that there were two passengers using wheelchairs, proceeded to yell out the door of the train, "Oh man we got a wheelchair!" While the passengers in wheelchairs didn't say anything, the MBTA employee demonstrated a blatant lack of tact in her choice of words. ... They may not be able to walk, but these wheelchair-using passengers have no trouble hearing your blatantly rude comments. ...
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Comments
I dun agree that was harsh
I hear a T employee throwing hands in the air, incredulous, that any of the event was happening at all... probably having been given very little information, worried about what to do, and not sure what to do... a training failure, a management failure, perhaps not something as bad as Mary Johnson wants it to be.
In times when things are completely haywire, can we not admit a little latitude?
I don't need to use a wheelchair, but if I were in some other situation where I needed extra help, the surface reading of "oh sweet jaysus what are we going to do with YOU" (someone said that to me once) may signal uncaring, but in fact the underlying feeling was "oh sweet jaysus I need to help this guy - right now - and i have no idea what to do and nobody's told me what to do and it's just him and me and I'm concerned"
no, really.
My read of this
A T employee who isn't able to handle their role in a situation that is exceptional but within the scope of things that should be handled.
S.O.P. then
and you are surprised by this because....
???
Org Dev hat again, speaking of employees as a mass, not of individuals: they don't know what their jobs are supposed to consist of, due to a combination of management failure and contracts; they aren't fully trained to do those unknown jobs and consider themselves independent of oversight and "management"; they just want to get in and out of work with as much money and as little work as possible.
I've watched a lot of people do their jobs, including T employees... there is nothing surprising in a T worker who is undertrained and not capable of handling situations that should be (emphasis "should") a standard part of their knowledge base.
Good luck to everyone in Boston if there's an actually "incident" requiring large-scale best-of-breed conduct by T employees, as a group, all at once.
I get the impression that some T employees
are good at what they do, including some operators and customer service people.
But we've all seen conspicuous incompetence and indifference at an individual employee level, even in normal situations, and organizational failures abound.
I'm placing this all on management.
sure, management is the fault
granted: some workers in some places are good at what they do. i didn't say all. Well, if i did, i sure did not mean "all". However there is the "taken as a whole" bit that is inescapable. What are the /general characteristics/ of this group? I can't with a straight face say "well trained, caring, committed to doing a great job". Just can't.
Ultimately, excepting the real outliers, every "worker failure" is at its root a management failure. But this is not an ordinary management failure - this is the cumulative result of decades of management failure such that the failed mode of operating is now the standard mode of operating. Or to be graphic, things have gone this way for so long, unchecked, that there is so much cancer in the system that the cancer is considered ordinary, and normal tissue is treated as foreign. How do you even begin to consider cleaning that up without killing the organism altogether?
Combination of dramatic
Combination of dramatic gesture (management shakeup, and immediate culling of the few-percent of widely-recognized screwups among rank&file) and then a constant barrage of incremental improvements to culture and operations?
The T would keep running at least as well as it does now, and should gradually improve.
Oh man, it's a slow news day
I'm with zbert. Seems to me those MBTA workers were genuinely concerned with the people in wheelchairs having to traverse gravel, uneven pavement, railroad tracks, and so forth.
Move along, nothing to see here.
What I wonder ...
... is how on earth one employee could possibly assist 2 individuals in wheel chairs in this situation (without abandoning one for a possibly lengthy period of time).
Like evacuating an airplane?
People in the exit rows have to assist with the emergency exits/inflating ramps...likely they recruited other passengers willing to help.
The driver only needs to know *how* to correctly evacuate the wheelchair-bound patrons. The rest can be done by volunteer.
Meanwhile, out in San Francisco ...
47 hurt when one trolley rear-ends another.
I have to wonder...
is management the problem or the union? Over the years, I have heard friends who worked for the T complain about if they do "too much" or are seen as "over eager," they get a little talking to from a union rep about not to do more than what they are supposed to do.
I have to wonder how many of the T's underlying problems are bottom up as much as top down?
The hiring of Grabuskas seemed to be inspired, the man who made the registry actually move at the rate of a slow trickle from a steady drop, drop, drop (and probably would have had it running well if he had been there longer) made sense. Under his watch there have been good things (sorry folks, I really love the Charlie Card/payment system on board these days and the guys at the Fenway stop after a game run like clockwork) and bad (the crash in Newton and Gov't Center.) But take the Gov't Ctr crash - how many of us riders screamed and shouted about cell phones and texting for how long? That night Danny Boy stood up and screamed ENOUGH only to have the carmen's union fight tooth and nail on the restrictions. Every time the upper management tries to shift the focus from the running of the system, the union is there to fight them.
On the other hand, management at the T tend to be complete dolts and last year, when gas prices skyrocketed and people were actually using the T, did the state kick in more to relieve the stress? No, they cut the budget saying "Hey, the additional fares should make up the difference... right? Management should have been able to produce the proper facts, figures, head counts and such to show the guys on Beacon Hill why they needed to support the T. Further, when someone calls to say, "Why wasn't I told there were problems on the commuter rail so I could plan accordingly?" the response should not be to put the person an email list about every little thing the T is doing. All we want is a freaking heads up in appropriate places (at the stops, on line, etc.), not the PR "woo hoo" craps generated by some PR group.
The T will NEVER be a money making or break even operation. It will always be a customer service and it's still a damn cite cheaper than many other public transportation systems out there.
Maybe it's on us, the ridership, to call elected officials and demand they actually support the idea of public transportation (all night service, etc.) rather than do things like cut the bus lines that get mall workers to their jobs (#60 bus) at malls they can't afford to shop at or force people behind the wheels of vehicles after a game or a show. I pay enough for Sox tickets that I shouldn't have to leave a good game early because I'm not sure if the train will be running when it's over. Maybe if we put the PUBLIC back in public transportation, things will improve.
Yes, they should have said,
Yes, they should have said, "We have some knee-less wonders here, please advise!"
Cut the overly sensitive crap. Next thing you know, we'll be calling unemployed people "Employment challenged" or "under employed" or even "Bloggers."
Classic
had this person been properly trained, they would have thought early on "but what do we do if there are wheelchair users on board". Or, better yet, they would have some written instructions for train evacuation available to them.
But that would require that the T actually have PLANS for what to do in a foreseeable situation ... and that they actually TRAIN people on a regular basis.
Yet another case of "but you should have some special permission to be disabled" from the MBTA - 100 years behind and losing ground daily.
"better yet"
So...
This person was not properly trained?
You know this person?
You know the T's training procedure?
You were on the train?
You have read or maybe wrote the T's training manual?
No?
No?
No?
No?
No?
No?
"Yet" you know all about the T, what went on on this particular train car on this particular day, and what the T employees have "available to them."
You're quite amazing!
Were they properly trained ...
... and properly supplied and the training properly backed by on-board instructions, the incident would not have happened and we wouldn't be having this conversation, now would we?
The fact is, the T does none of this. They make it up as they go along - and I know that because I know people who have driven trains and buses for many years in a couple of different parts of the country (including Boston).
I think it's time a certain girlie gets a life
Get this thru your head girlie....THERE WAS NO 'INCIDENT'.
There is so much real crap going on in this city. Why don't you
and "Megan" pick a real issue, and then DO SOMETHING about that, rather than just whine and complain and nitpick stupid little fake "incidents"?
How in the world was this
How in the world was this rude? Are the people in wheelchairs still sitting in that train? No? Then it's my guess that the T people did their job. The people in wheelchairs didn't complain (maybe because THERE WAS NOTHING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT), so what in the world is your problem?
Things are tough all over, "Megan;" buck up and stop being such a big baby.
Hey, it's a job and somebody has to do it
In other words, she's paid to whine. (Love the "since age 18" credential. How long would that be, exactly?)
Paid to whine
It's good work, if you can get it.