Its all go at the Junction
Monday – The Medic found two little kids, 12 and 9, running barefoot round the station and discovered they’d run away from foster care the night before. Since the older child was mentally handicapped it was the younger who was the brains behind this scheme.
He persuaded them to come into the station for muffins and trainspotting till the police and Child Services arrived.
Tuesday – A man was yelling racial abuse at a lady in a headscarf (this was the day after the Sydney Siege.) Other customers stood up for her and the police arrived and took him aside for stern talking-to. One of the few good things to come out of this horrible event is the “#I’ll ride with you movement which makes me kinda proud.
Wednesday – I drew the short straw and got the job of cleaning vomit out of the sink in the women’s toilets. This is a matter of pouring water into the sink and then massaging the contents with a toilet brush till it all goes down the plug hole. A customer poked her head in the door while I was doing this and we had a ruefully humorous conversation about the nastiness of it all. When I emerged from the toilets feeling as if I’d never be clean again, I discovered that she had paid for the kiosk to make me a coffee as a reward for the task. Bless her! The coffee went down a treat.
Thursday – Technology failure!!!!! All the screens went blank and I was forced to rely on the paper timetables in order to give train information. (OMG! Quelle Horror!)With the help of the people in the control room and the fact that the trains ran pretty much to schedule we muddled through bravely for an hour and a half until the screens came back and we were able to rejoin the modern world again.
Friday – I’m went in early for Christmas morning tea and an exchange of Kris Kringles. This year I drew one of the bosses and bought him a sauce gun – a plastic gun-shaped tomato sauce bottle. I figured this was the perfect gift for a man who is soon to have 5 children under 10 and look forward to seeing pictures of the resulting mayhem.
And then I manned the barriers (sounds very Les Miserables, doesn’t it?) Mayhem occurred when a group of kids on bicycles invaded the station riding and chucking wheelies on the concourse and platforms and flipping us the bird when we asked (with increasing ferocity) that they stop. But Age and Cunning will always win over Youth and Beauty. One of them was unwise enough to leave his bike unguarded while he went to the toilet. I yielded to a bad impulse, put the bike in the lift and pressed it to go down to the platform. Then I locked myself in the office and made him beg me to tell him where it was. Satisfying, but I suspect ultimately it’s unwise to up the ante like that.