A Tube Noobs Guide to the London Underground

Or: how not to get an irate Londoner in the small of your back.

Entering the station

Do not:
Loiter in front of the ticket barriers so no one else can get to them causing a massive queue
Push in front of people to stay with your group. We don't care. Brits queue. End.
Go to the ticket machine with no idea of what ticket you want
Go to the ticket machine with no change if you intend to pay in cash
Go to the ticket machine have a chat right in front of it.

Using the escalators

Do not:
Loiter at the top of the escalators so no one else can get to them causing a massive queue
Push in front of people to stay with your group. It's a long way down. For either of us.
Stand on the left. They're not optional.
Leave your luggage on the left
Stop at the bottom to have a discussion about which direction you need to go in
Stop at the bottom to have a chat about your date last night
Stop at the bottom to snog your date of tonight

Getting to the platform

Do not:
Create a rolling roadblock with your family, friends or other group. Some of us are not on holiday.
Comment about how everyone is in a terrible rush. Fancy a 2.5 hour daily commute? We're hungry, get out of our way

Using a platform

Do not:
Stand in the middle of the platform, neither forward nor at the back but loitering vaguely
Stand in front of the yellow line. Tubes hurt far more than Londoners if they hit you in the small of the back.
Loiter in the entrance as you fail massively to decide which of only 2 options you will choose - left or right
Choose the entrance as a good place for a snog/hug/handshake goodbye

Getting on the tube

Do not:
Stand in front of the door so no one can get off. We will barge through you as if you were not there. Think we're too polite cos we queue? Find out how wrong you are.
Try and get on the train before everyone is off. It's permission for us to play rugby. We will.
Race to get in front of pregnant/disabled/children in tow in search of a seat. You look like a douche-bag.
Comment on how hot it is. It's hot. Get over it.

Riding the tube

Do not:
Think you're too cool to hold on. A smashed jaw or broken nose is not cool.
Try and continue reading your paper in a space a small shrew couldn't wriggle through.
Get uppity about your personal space. There is no personal space. Get over it. Or walk.
Look nervous or comment when a train stops in a tunnel.
Sing, talk loudly, argue or otherwise bring attention to yourself in rush hour. You'll know if its rush hour.
Abandon your humanity the second you enter through the doors. People sometimes need help. Help them.

Getting off the tube

Do not:
Dawdle. How long have you know the next stop is your stop?
Assume everyone is psychic and knows this is your stop. Excuse me works wonders.
Stop just outside the doors to sort your shopping/find your oyster card/chat to your mate.

Yours, a very tired, very irritated, dreading the bloody Olympics temporary Londoner.

#pixiedusted

I'm going to follow true DIBB (Disney with a British Accent Boards) tradition and do an attempt at a trip report of our trip to Florida over there which I'll link here when completed (which could be months judging by how long it takes everyone else to get around to it) but I wanted to chuck something here.

Before we went, I have to say, this was a trip for my other half. It's his 40th this year. When I asked him 'left or right?' he knew I meant US or Australia and he picked left. I wanted him to pick right. I don't think he knows that - he does now but it's okay to say it now. I am not a fan of humidity, I am not a fan of tat, I am not a fan of flying and I was not a fan of Americans particularly either with some very notable exceptions (yes, Ann, Hadley et al I am looking at you).  Go me with my tarring etc.

So I bought him a hol to Florida for his 40th. He picked the parks, we got Universal 14 day 2 park tickets for free included with the hol, bought 3 park Busch, Aquatica and Seaworld 14 day ticket and then finally added Kennedy Space Centre on top. Compared to most Brits on tour this is a small haul of tickets, trust me.

I spent the next year planning. Tripit filled up, Advance Dining Reservations were made (the one bit that was solely for me and selfish, I confess - my other half is a vegetarian who is allergic to cheese, food as a leisure activity is an alien concept for obvious reasons) - and I read other peoples trip reports, asked some dumbass questions of my own to contribute to the mass of dumbass questions on the DIBB (it's the nicest forum I know - peoples patience never seems to run out and its appreciated so much), and generally tried to keep the little aspie bit of me quiet by knowing exactly what was going to happen and when so there were no nasty surprises and I wouldn't end up in any stupid situations which would be difficult if it could be avoided.

As a result, I wasn't excited about going until the day before. At all. It looked complicated, difficult, challenging and the weather forecast was scaring me. Work hadn't exactly been a wind down the week before, I was finding it exceptionally difficult to switch off and was, honestly, a wee bit stressed truth be told.

Staying at the Radisson Blu at Manchester Airport the night before helped. Dinner at Nandos and a film (Avengers!) in the afternoon also helped as did booking the V-Room which is an oasis of calm in a sea of airport madness. Who the hell designed airports anyway? Cold, clinical, hospital like with all the bad associations which come with that, combined with sucky heating, crap loos, old lifts, crap signage and hard seats. To be fair, Manchester beats the hell out of Luton, Gatwick, Stansted and Liverpool (I've never flown from the same airport twice yet, bar Liverpool, don't ask).

After Virgin Atlantic delivered us onto the runway safely (lets just say it was the most scary rollercoaster of the whole trip, landings aren't supposed to involve more down than forward motion, I'm sure you're not supposed to turn right to taxi straight after coming to a screaming stop which threw us all forward in our seats really quite hard actually and the clapping was absolutely deserved for the pilot who I think was possibly right on the edge of what the plane brakes could do) it finally hit me. Bit weepy. Walking into holiday brochure moment for a girl who used to cut out images from Virgin brochures to make scrapbooks of all the Florida adventures she'd one day go on (ha ha ha didn't believe I'd ever go for a second when I was a kid). Serious 'moment'.

Orlando International is a beautiful airport. Our car was fricking awesome - we got a free upgrade cos we used the Brit Guide discount code and it was automatic this and really clever that with tonnes of storage and we only got it cos we were dithering so long over colours of cars in the lot and then 'our' one turned up and we practically snatched it out of the car hire delivery ladies hand.

Hotel was...what we paid for. Most people going to Orlando seem to end up staying in quite nice hotels. We stayed I think it what I would call a functional one. T'other half was lovely and went back to reception to ask for a view of Universal which they gave us which was really sweet of them. The clientele was this really odd mix of businessman, conference goer, local reveller and tourist. It made for some awkward lift moments. Brekkie was nice, pool was small, it wasn't somewhere we felt we wanted to hang around? I don't know, I wouldn't recommend it I don't think, but nor was it a disaster.

And what followed was two weeks of utter wonderment, bewilderment, confusion, gawping, magic, smiles, tears, fireworks, fantastic customer service, appalling customer service ridiculous amounts of food and a dalliance with Disney magic which we're hoping to fully immerse ourselves in next time we go back.

Yeah, there's going to be a next time. ;O))

The one thing I've taken away from our holiday apart from a tan and some freckles?

If imagination is not mentioned anywhere in your company or organisations mission statement, company report or vision, or whatever the hell you want to call it, you are not going to survive. Innovation is nothing, absolutely nothing without imagination to fuel it first. So don't go recruiting innovators, go recruit  some imagineers - for without them, nothing new would ever happen, no idea would ever be had, and no kid would ever stand on Main Street, on Universals lot or across from a launch pad and believe that absolutely anything was possible. For two weeks, I believed anything was possible.  Considering my job and where I would like my job to take me, I intend to hold onto that belief with absolutely everything I have.

I'm not religious but...

I'm not religious but...

I don't think about religion much either.  I don't read Richard Dawkins and I don't go to church because I just don't feel the need to. I don't believe in God. I don't believe in fate. Or heaven or hell.

What I do believe in, absolutely and utterly, is other peoples right to claim the comfort, community and shared care which religions give to those who need it (as long as no harm is done).  I don't believe in attacking or intellectually deconstructing other peoples beliefs. I believe other peoples beliefs are their and no business of mine.

So why am I sharing this with you?

A footballer fell over on a pitch. Lots of people tweeted the hashtag #prayformuamba... and then the comments appeared, retweeted into my stream, that prayers were not what was needed for muamba, that medics were needed.

Well the thing is, how do you know for sure? In the same way I can't prove there isn't a god, I don't think anyone can prove there is one either. But I suspect the outpouring of tweets, well wishes and thoughts are singlehandedly improving the internal relations of the football fan community as we speak. If some of those fans choose to express their concerns in terms of religion because that is what they turn to for comfort in times when they feel fear, or grief, or sadness, then who are we to remove that?

You don't take a teddy off a 5 year old who's crying. And in my mind, having a pop at a bunch of people who believe prayers work right now, that's kind of akin to removing their teddy bear.

It's a pretty poor world we live in if we cannot allow adults the same warm comfort and solace at times when they feel they need it because of some weird innate sense in ourself that means we need to impose our own thoughts, belief patterns and superiority on others.

______________________________________________

I used to work as a Court Officer in the Probation Service. I also was asked to be the Diversity Rep, in the absence of anyone else volunteering. One day, one of the Probation Officers came to me and asked me why some of the other Probation Officers were being so dismissive of her religion, explaining to her that 'they couldn't understand why someone so intelligent believed not even in one god but in many of them, like some kind of weird fantasy book'.

I didn't know what to say.  I was young, I guess, and I was the wrong person to be a Diversity Rep. I don't know why I was asked either, and part of me hopes the suspicion it was because I was the only white girl going to lunch with a bunch of black girls were completely unfounded. The lady whose beliefs were being questioned was a female Sri Lankan, a Hindu and still one of the most sparkly, vivacious and wonderful people I've ever known. In fact, coincidentally, I seem to only ever have crossed paths with utterly lovely Hindus.

Anyway.

She felt her intelligence was being called into question, but even more than that, her culture as well as her religion. For her, family, culture and religion were unquestionably intertwined. She did not question her heritage, she did not question her religion. This was because her religion was not something to be questioned - instead it was linked to spirituality, something she felt, not thought. Therefore, to her, it was completely bizarre for someone to question her thinking on the matter. It was like someone questioning where she was born, how she was born, and how she would die.

For some religions, culture and tradition entrenched within it are so closely linked to ones sense of self that to try and detach the two is simply impossible. To remove the religion would remove the need for the tradition and if you remove tradition from a life wrapped around it, then you remove the community from that person because that is where community crosses, where contact is made, where predictable paths cross and recross again.

____________________________________________

I guess what I'm trying to say is, questioning someones religion? It's might look simple to you, from your purely intellectual point of view, but religion isn't intellectual. It's spiritual. And this little unlabelled person  aint messing about with no one else's sense of that.

There is no I in Team

I don't agree with that statement. I don't agree with it at all. And here's why.

If there is no I in Team, then there is no Team. What constitutes a Team? A complex and fabulous mix of assorted talents, egos, sense of humour, backgrounds, loves, dislikes, musical tastes, passions and expressions - or not.

Each of those things, each of those little foibles are valuable to the Team. They contribute something fundamental to the 'dynamics' of the team - I hate the word dynamics but I can't think of a better one. So what is a dynamic? The thing that makes a team a Team. It's the way you fit together, the way you contribute together in order to achieve an objective, the way you are frictionless or frictionful, the way you trust and the way you hesitate.

If there is no I in Team, how do you know what someone will bring to your team life? How do you know when that person is likely to be sad and when they are likely to be happy? How do you know it's sunny so today is a good day to load Jo with some extra work because she'll be finished by 3pm and twiddling her thumbs and she doesn't like doing that much? How do you know that last night Sam went to a gig he has been looking forward to for weeks and this morning might not be the best time to tell him his workload for next week just doubled as a deadline shifted forward 5 days? How do you know that Ella went to a funeral on flexi time this morning and it might be best that everyone just left her alone for a while until she made it clear herself she was ready to join in again in her usual joke throwing pithy comment lobbing way?

There are multiple I's in team. Multiple personalities and multiple external influences. Lots of wrongs and lots of rights. Lots of conflicting pulls on time and thought and energy. Lots of fabulous energy which if harnessed at the right time can do simply amazing things. But simply amazing things are not achieved by one person alone - simply amazing things are achieved by pulling together, leaving the differences between I's at home and putting Team first.

But that does not mean there is no I in Team.

Ambition is a dirty word

Sarah Lay wrote this and it's brilliant. It's brilliant because it's true. All of it, from beginning to end.

My move to GDS has been greeted by a number of different reactions and comments. Some have been cutting and have hurt. Some have left me almost breathless with their kindness and belief in me. Some have been uncalled for, some have misunderstood entirely what my job role will be and who my stakeholders will be also.

I have found it very interesting. I have found that in the main, it is women who have been breathtakingly kind, positive, and fierce in their congratulations and vicarious excitement. This may be because I do not have as many male friends as I am used to having, I don't know. It may be because there is a perception among some men that I have stepped outside of the normal promotional path and somehow 'jumped the queue'. It may even be a complete lack of understanding of what I do, how I do it, where I do it and how well I do it - I couldn't possibly comment.

But there is a marked difference.

We are sold on the fallacy that women are evil to each other in the workplace. We are fed tales of horrendous female bosses who are cutting, sarcastic, box people in, never praise, lock the talented in a box and take all their credit. Just like the word ambition, there are so many negative connotations, stories and 'legends' which swirl and grow.

In my experience, they are not true. I would not describe any of the women I know as lonely, unfulfilled, without children or husband or family, as isolated or unhappy. Instead, I see a group of women who mentor when the men wont do it, who pick up the slightly knocked about and shine them up a bit, polish them, listen and send them on their way. I see women who listen, make time to nurture, who balance the requirements of being part of a family (they don't run them the same way they run organisations, or Departments or Sections), with the needs of the slightly nervous and timid, balanced with having a whole hell of a lot of fun for themselves.

I look at them, and I see women who are not ruthless. Not negative. Not soft. Not alone. I see empowered, in control, magicians with time who balance all the needs of everyone around them and manage, most of the time to do the impossible - be happy. Not all the time, not all the people, not all the requirements and needs, but most of the time.

I don't know any man who is happy all of the time, do you? So why do we expect women to be? We do more, are more, have more than we have ever had before, and slowly but surely more of us are accepting that it is okay.

But believe me when I say, none of us are going to be getting anywhere on our own, without help, support, nurturing and mentoring. Say the word nurture to a man in a work context and I suspect you'll get a slightly panicked response. Say it to a woman and there will be no blinks.

That's not to say, women are better than men. They're just different. But in my very short experience in life I have had as many awesome female mentors as male and they have brought very different things to the table.

But the women, to the last, have never tried to undermine me, cut me down, mocked me, ignored me, patronised me, pushed my buttons or locked me in a box. I am sad to say those accolades all sit in the laps of the men I have reported to in whatever capacity over the past 10 years. I may have been lucky and I may be about to be forced to eat my words in the next 10 but if today is stupid assumptions about women dispelling day then that's my contribution.

JFDI > evaluation != lack of innovation

It's late. I'm tired. But this needs writing.

JFDI died a little when some people decided it wasn't the way to do things - too much rushing in, not enough evaluation of impact. Then we tried to work out how to evaluate impact and it all went quiet.

Well. I've come to my own conclusion and it's working out okay, I think. It's this. JFDI has its place. It really does. Experimentation leads to people using LinkedIn for slightly offball reasons which yield some excellent revenue results. When someone came to me and asked if I thought it was a good idea, I told her it was kickass. I didn't _know_ it was kickass but it made my tummy do that little jump of excitement it does when someone says something awesome - so off she went and it worked.

I could have said no. I couldn't set pre-emptive performance indicators on her actions. I could have decided that it was time ill spent and asked her to focus on the already not inconsiderable successes in social media she'd achieved. But that's not what this is about.

JFDI is not rushing blind. It's using all the informed knowledge you have amassed and at any given moment someone suggesting something and you using all that knowledge and experience to say yes or no. You might be wrong. Part of that momentary decision needs to be a risk analysis on that. Time invested, money invested, users time wasted. But, still, I believe there is a place for saying yes, go for it, lets see what happens.

On the flip of this, evaluation is necessary. Not as necessary as JFDI but still nearing vital. How do I know the experiment on LinkedIn worked? I can't tell you because it's not something as ridiculously simple as advertising a job post there and I'd have to be pretty dumb to not know how to pre-emptively set evaluation of success for that.

No. Someone decided to bend the rules slightly. And why does evaluation have to be positive anyway? I can say before actioning something with surety that it will be either a success, not a success, or a bit meh. If it's a bit meh, examine what went wrong, see what could be improved, re-implement, come back in 3 months time. If a success, yattah! If not, bin it. Lessons learned, move on. But without any measurement of outcome, how do I get to the lessons learned bit? If I never learn any lessons then what on earth is the point of doing anything? No one gets it right 100% first time.

Ah. But then we are talking about local government and public money. Not getting it right first time can result in job loss, public ridicule and all kinds of such mayhem. So we must temper all our innovation, our testing, our ideas and our curiosity. We have a responsibility to do so to the people we serve. And yes, we do serve them, they pay our wages.

So that momentary decision? Which needs to be momentary or else you're taking way too long and the digital world has moved on without you? Bit more tricky. Suddenly a lot more tricky. But if you made that decision in seconds, I'd argue it was too fast, and if you made it in days you were too slow. You've got hours and minutes to assess all the risks, dangers, opportunities and potential successes before you say go on a new idea.

Be quick or be:
dead
called
asked
avoidably contacted
ridiculed
evaluated?

No. If you can't evaluate fast enough, change something. Change your idea of evaluation, talk to your performance team. Because if you're flying on the seat of your pants without your performance team, my friend, you are doing it wrong. They need to be the JFDI'ers best friend. But you're going to have to explain to them why the evaluation matrix which didn't include blog evaluation 6 months ago needs to do so now and to do that, you kind of need to a) know where they sit b) know how to talk to them and c) understand they know more about evaluation than you could ever hope to.

JFDI > evaluation != lack of innovation.

Just be quick.

Grit and grind, baby

While I was growing up, neither of my parents worked. Various reasons. 

My first job was as a paper girl, at 14, carrying the Sunday newspapers back when you couldn't fold them barely to get them through the letter box. Paper list telling me who gets what in one hand printed on a dot matrix printer. Mint and white stripes.

My second job was as a Saturday girl in a bakery. Cleaning the bakery. Lots of lifting heavy stainless steel bits to get into other bits with big mixing blades. Lots of stainless steel counters. Toilets and cake baking studios. £10 for the mornings work, starting at 8am and finishing at midday. The same bakery my mum used to send me down to with 40p in my pocket to get a wholemeal loaf fresh out of the ovens - so fresh it was almost unspreadable.

Then I left school.

During college I worked at weekends at a local supermarket, shelf stacking and on the tills, sometimes standing for 9 hours in the cigarette kiosk, often working 12 hour shifts. In the previous jobs I'd had so little clue what to do with the money that I'd simply spent a pound on the luxury of a weekend newspaper for myself (back then there was no internet and knowledge cost a lot of money - even if it was a return bus fare to the nearest town to go to the local library once a week) and the rest would get used by my mum when she was short. Which was often.

The supermarket money funded new clothes. A novelty. Music, cassette tapes an even bigger novelty. Cigarettes and the odd drink here and there - for some reason because we knew we could get served, we always just ordered halves and never actually really got drunk. 

Off to university. Grants and overdrafts and credit cards because no one explained that a loan would be cheaper. No help from parents - what on earth would they help with and by that point mum was a single parent anyway. First year = debt. Second year = working 5-9pm every week day doing data entry and then 10pm to 3am Thursdays to Saturdays in a local nightclub behind the bar.

Leave university. Fail abysmally. You can guess why, right?

Get a job. Doing data entry at the same company but 9-5pm and then still working at the club but now 10-3am Thursdays to Sundays, supporting two of us on my two jobs, paying the rent, paying the bills, luxury in life being able to afford 10 proper cigarettes instead of smoking roll ups - my secret treat once a week and hidden from the non working partner.

Leave university. Go to London. Temp. Get a permanent job. Get promoted. Take voluntary redundancy. Temp some more. Do admin, do data entry at Loot at weekends, do admin during the week. Get taken on permanently, then apply for promotion and get it. Become a Probation Service Officer and hate it. Back to temping, back to admin.

I have never, not once claimed any kind of benefit. I got into a complete and utter mess with money while a student and just after and I have paid every single god damn penny off. My credit rating has one, count them one, late payment in 3 years across 7 different credit accounts (catalogue, try being a fat person and not shopping with La Redoute and Simply Be).

I have done whatever I needed to do, to pay the bills and keep a roof over my head. I consider myself lucky that I have never had to resort to anything illegal to do so. Instead, I have never turned work down, have never been too proud to take a job, and have used my typing skills to feed myself and often others too. 

I never once looked at my parents and felt disrespect. I never once felt scorn. I never once judged. Conversely, I never considered that that was a life that I wanted for myself, not one which I would have.

Instead, I have worked. Hard. At whatever I was lucky enough to be able to do to earn a wage, more often than not, not a decent one.

Is there a point to this post? Are things different now? Does drive and determination count for nothing? Who knows. But I know where I'm throwing my chips.