Okay, bit late but here's what I've been upto lately.
The day after my last message, I did a day of training regarding customers and putting them first. Pretty normal things like how to deliver good customer service, how to help and stuff.
Since last week, I've also learned how to administer basic first aid, how to avoid conflicts (and deal with conflicts) and how to evacuate a train/what to do in an emergency. We also learnt about fire and how to deal with fire and what to do etc.
With the conflict course, one highlight of the day was when one of the trainers "randomly" came in and started swearing at one of the trainees to our surprise. The point of that was to demonstrate a possible situation in the real world where should this happen, we can report it and we were taught how to.
With the train evacuation, we were taken down the Marsh and let loose on an old BR Mark 2 carriage. Each member of the class was given a role (I was an off duty member of staff) and we all took part in an evacuation exercise where we had to de-train passengers and assist. I was given the lovely job of making sure everyone stayed in the safe area which was challenging when the "drunks" kept walking off
After that, the carriage was filled up with smoke and we all went through it twice. Once walking through and the second time we crawled through. The heat in the carriage was intense as it was supposed to simulate a fire environment.
This week, more theory stuff where we learnt about disability awareness including how to deal with disabled customers and customers with other issues. We also experimented with the yellow ramps used at stations and one member of the group very nearly chopped his fingers off when he flung the ramps open. We also did the PIDD course where we were shown how to communicate with passengers and deal with them during times of disruption.
Today started the retail aspect of the job where we learned about the geographical aspect of the company and to locate stations both on the network and other TOC's and the Underground. Today definitely showed my knowledge of LO & NR as I answered almost everything that was thrown at me. We learnt more about headcodes (e.g. 1A24) and how to identify trains as well as learning in more detail about timetables and how to direct customers.
It's been an enjoyable few days with today being probably the best. I "accidentaly" corrected the trainer when he said Robert Beck created the Tube Map). I say accidental...it just came out without thinking (was kinda funny as I wasn't listening properly as I was looking at the map when I spoke. I managed to have the class in stitches though after our trainer pretended to walk out) In his defence, his colleague told him that a while ago. I also had several "How do you know all this" questions especially when I used the station master app to tell me the door position for a Bakerloo > Jubilee change at Baker Steet. Everyone was asking me for help when it come to the LU stuff. Several people joked that they're going to send people to me for advice when customers approach them!
I've got four more days of Retail Foundation Training and then got my STAR training. Tomorrow we're doing tickets...
Sounding good so far!