In Service

Tuesday, 23rd January 2007

Well today was the day I was let loose on the unsuspecting public. You are assigned a mentor to begin with - another driver who accompanies you round, making sure you follow the correct route, helping out with ticketing and reminding you about the timetable.

An early start, 07.14 departure from the garage on the Clockwise 'Loop' service for 3 hours. And a pretty busy start. You forget almost instantly how to find destinations etc. on the ticket machine; customers don't always ask for the next fare stage of course, they want stops in between, which I'm not familiar with. And then some ask for the fare instead, eg £1 please, so you have to ask them where they're going, which they take offence to because they get on at this stop every day and ask for a pound fare and there's not normally a problem!

That's where the mentor steps in and says '22' Andy and I just key in 22 and hooray the right destination and the right price! Good idea these mentors. Still, managed to get round the loop OK. But because this is a circular service, you have to remember to update the electronic destination indicators 4 times on every circuit - it's not just there and back! Step in mentor again - 'change the destination Andy - hit the back button three times, you should be showing Broadstairs and Ramsgate'.

But we got round ok, and only 5 minutes late! Afternoon work was a more straightforward - there and back runs on routes 8 and 'short' 9s. All in all not a bad start.