Not been a good morning today. As you know, most often I take a train to work
and swedens railroad companies are, well, lets just say their time tables isn’t
exactly accurate and leave it at that.

I leave home in good time, drive to the trainstation and park the car, walk to the ticket
machine and swipe my card. No admittance. Well, this was kinda expected as its about time
to renew the monthly card. So, went inside, and what do I see? The train is, as usual,
delayed. It’s time is now 7:41. Well, that it is an “OK” time as that makes me pretty
much get to work just a few minutes late, about 5 or 6. My bosses are understanding
to my late comings due to trains but really, it bugs me to be late. So, I walk
out to the platform, and start to wait. And wait…. And waaaaaaaaaait. 7:52 the
train rolls in. A quick door opening and off we go. By now, I am pretty steaming
due to the lateness, but I am as always, polite to the personel at the train.

I start to listen to a popular radio station, Mix megapol, the reasons are that
they are the ones who have the best reception if you want to listen to anything
but classic music or foreign languages, and the pleasant voiced host talks
about this and that between songs.

I roll into Västerås waay to late for my taste and pretty much more or less runs
towards work (have I mentioned that I hate to be late) And when I do, I cross a huge
gravel parking lot. About this time, the host of the show starts talking about
trainrides and I feel that spark of ire reach some tinder and starts to smoulder.
Then comes the kicker.

“There has probably been a lot of good things with train rides, text message us
with your story of how good trainrides are”

I almost exploded then and there.

The reason for this is that the entire winter, the swedish railways have had problems,
Multitudes of trains have been cancelled and not a single one has left on time as it
should, when they have left at all, and since then, the entire infrastructure has been
shot to hell in a handbasket. An estimate is that about 1 in every 5 morning that I
go by train, the train leaves on time, and someone wants me to sit down, relax and
have a good time on a train ride? What the hell.

If my boss starts to withdraw from my paycheck, can I demand that from the swedish
railway companies. Noooooooo. Let’s say that I was my own employee as a consultant,
would the swedish railways hire someone that is late more often then not due to
someone elses fault? I mean, after a while it just sounds like a bad excuse, no matter
how true it really is and that rails me.

Imagine the consultant who lives by the three pillars of “Punctuality”, “Thouroughness”
and “Completion”

First off, he will loose some of his reputation for not being able to present the first,
the second will take a hit because you cant be thourough if you constantly worry about time
and the completion will be suffering because every week, 1-2 hours will mysteriously dissapear
due to commuting problems and that could seriously hamper critical systems. And what does
the railway companies do? Not a frigging thing. Not even, despite having a large IT
section, do they continously update train departures so that people would be able to
see if it is a waste of time to wait for the train, OR reimburse costs for gasoline
due to being forced to take a car to work. How’s that in your eye, enviromentalist party?