Oval Thinkers in Metro

Tao and the Art of Tubing

After all the stressful thoughts of yesterday, it was nice to see Tuesday's Metro reporting on the guys at Oval station with their "Thoughts of the Day". This station was first brought to my attention a few months ago and there's a site which shows all of the "thoughts" which appear at Oval station.



The motivations behind the station assistants were to improve relations between staff and passengers, and they were very surprised at the positive reaction they got.

�It�s a break in that routine which everyone gets into, of rushing into the Tube and ignoring everything around them. It�s unexpected and catches them by surprise.

�No one has ever said they don�t like it. We get at least three good comments a day. One woman regularly takes a photo of it with her phone and sends it to her husband.

�We�ve made so many friends through it. People come up and speak to us. Without the �Thought of the Day�, we would not have had that interaction. People look for it now. We never expected this sort of reaction.

�It works both ways - it shows customers that staff are not faceless and vice versa. It says we do care about how they feel about travelling on the Underground. And we care about how they feel about us.�

Nice one guys. But I wonder now that they've had fame through Metro whether the posts will change or become wackier? At the moment they come from the ancient Chinese Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu. Perhaps they'll become more widespread across the system. One can only hope.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Wednesday, December 01, 2004 Permalink COMMENT HERE
Tweet http://london-underground.blogspot.com/2004/12/oval-thinkers-in-metro.html