In the week it was announced that rail fares would be going up yet again, it was reassuring to discover that there is potentially help at hand to ease the lot of the hard-pressed train user, driven inevitably by the power of technology.
Mark the words of Trevor Elswood, chief commercial officer at Capita Travel and Events: “By bringing together data sets from around the business, including HR records, absenteeism and attrition information, organisations are able to identify traveller personas that provide insight into the probable impact travel is having on employees.”
Good stuff, Trevor, even if it is perhaps a little oblique. But as a long-suffering commuter who has been delayed by swans, wheelie bins and horses on the line, not to mention the want of a person to decouple a train at Waterloo, the country’s busiest station, I would suggest a simpler solution – just ask your employee the following question, “Good journey to work today?” and if their face turns thunderous, quickly change the subject. No amount of attrition information is going to assuage the dissatisfaction of the poor, delayed sap on the 7.47.
Onwards to another form of travel, namely planes. Reading a book with the splendid title of Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front by Serhii Plokhy, I came across the following: “Then we stood around for a while everyone was swapping short snorters.” Thank you, Google, for the following: “A short snorter is a banknote inscribed by people travelling together on an aircraft. The tradition was started by Alaskan bush flyers in the 1920s.” (Why you would want to hand over your hard-earned to strangers is beyond me.) Rather good phrase; shame it seems to have dropped out of popular usage.
•Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist
