“Hi Mark.....”

It’s the Dublin Bus customer service Twitter account responding after I complained a no-show had made me late on Wednesday morning, yet again.

“What stop number are you at?”

I want to scream: “1984!!. I’m at stop number 1984!!” Because it always seems like 1984 to me when I have my regular problems with Dublin Bus and its Orwellian, dystopian view of what constitutes customer service.

But I can’t scream that it’s 1984. That stop number is actually on the Naas Road, near the Bluebell Luas station, serving the number 13 into town.

I’m standing at my local stop in Kimmage waiting on the number 83 – the god damned, infuriating, diary-destroying 83 – and I’ve been here for a half hour.

I had arrived at the stop five minutes before my mid-morning bus was due. Plenty of time. The bus was by now 25 minutes late, which meant I was too. The 83 is meant to arrive every 15 minutes, so the bus after the one that hadn’t showed was also late.

Then the bus rounded the corner. Praise be! I might yet catch the end of the morning event I was trying to reach. But, no, bloody hell, no... It has an “out of service” sign on the front and steams past everybody at the stop.

In my experience, Dublin Bus does this sort of thing all the time.

It seems to me that on the first few stages of a route, it often skips timetabled departures, before sending the missing buses ahead while supposedly empty and “out of order”, to pick up passengers further down the line.

It also seems to sometimes run the departure following the one it has skipped a few minutes early, to try to hide its rewriting of the timetable and obvious lack of capacity.

The comedian responsible for this timetabling is “out of order”, not the bus.

To hell with the people who arrive on time for the second bus and find it has gone early. To hell with the people who have been standing at the stop for a half hour waiting for the first bus, before an empty one breezes by.

I could have sworn that engine roar sounded like laughter.

I remind Dublin Bus’s Twitter that the bus is late yet again – the 83 is late as often as it is on time in the morning – and wait for the stock response that it “couldn’t operate for operational reasons”.

A bus eventually arrives. I hop on it and seethe, wondering how much of a pay rise I need to buy a house on the Luas line.

As the bus arrives in town, Dublin Bus tweets me the same dud explanation it had offered 25 minutes earlier. There must have been a shift change on the Twitter account, and the new person was doubling up on queries.

My 83 debacle made me late for an event at the CHQ mall in Dublin, where the main speaker was Minister for Transport, Shane Ross. By the time I arrived, he had left. I couldn’t even tell him what a shoddy service his department was ultimately responsible for.

What a first world problem, I hear all you non-Dublin Bus users retort. What a petty, minuscule inconvenience to be merely made a half hour late.

But the real problem, the core frustration, is that it is so typical of my experience of the service. It is death by a thousand missed appointments.

I now expect Dublin Bus to make me late, or to not show up at all, or for its “real-time” boards to be complete works of fiction, or to be passed by an “out of order” bus that is clearly nothing of the sort.

And I believe my frustration is typical of many Dublin Bus users. Check out the company’s hopping Twitter feed for proof. Ask your workmate, your granny, your watch-tapping boss.

The funniest thing I read this week about the Dublin Bus strike was that the company’s Ghost Bus tour was cancelled. I deal with “ghost buses” every day. Every Dublin Bus user left stranded at a stop knows what they are.

The company will say its real-time system, supposedly validated by the National Transport Authority, is 96 per cent accurate. Kim Jong-Un might use a similar lofty metric. Whatever Dublin Bus claims, I know my own experiences. I also know my cash fare has risen 70 per cent in a little over five years.

The NTA, by the way, hasn’t published its supposed quarterly assessment of the quality of Dublin Bus’s services for almost a year.

The striking drivers may or may not have a case over pay. But when a deal is eventually done – inevitably including so-called productivity measures – could somebody please ensure that one of those measures addresses the quality, and proper measurement of, its customer service?

Your customers: you remember who they are, surely?

*****************************

FOOTNOTES

– Paul McGinley, the 2014 Ryder Cup-winning captain, was impressive as he regaled a room of mostly women business leaders about his rise to the top at Investec’s Women in Leadership breakfast at the InterContinental hotel in Dublin this week.

McGinley wasn’t an obvious choice for Ryder Cup captain before he got the job. But the underdog made his case behind the scenes, with the right people, strategically networking his way along until he was where he wanted to be.

Speaking to me after the Investec event, he expanded on his theme that it isn’t enough to work hard or have talent to be a successful leader. McGinley insisted you also have to network, you have to “play the game”.

Especially if you are a woman, he said, because, as every study shows, women are underdogs in business.

McGinley lamented that, according to one estimate he had seen, “80 per cent” of women in lower-ranked managerial positions don’t make it to the top level of their organisations. He wondered if women networked as much as men, might their chances improve.

“Most women are just as intelligent, and probably more diligent, than most men. Why do so many fall by the wayside in business? They need to be aware of the networking that goes on [amongst men].

“You have to network. Like it or not, those are the rules of the game. Climbing the corporate ladder is a game, just like any other.”

McGinley’s playing career is winding down, but he keeps busy with 14 corporate sponsors and 10 annual media events for Sky. The marketing graduate is also on the lookout for an “equity investment, a project” should one present itself.

An opportunity for another diligent networker, perhaps.

– The lineup of speakers is about to be announced for the Irish Management Institute’s annual conference, which takes place at its Sandyford Road base on September 29th and will be opened by An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny.

“Managing disruption, seizing opportunity” is the theme. Kenny will surely have plenty to contribute on the managing disruption, part, at least. Anybody trying to handle John Halligan could address that topic in their sleep.

The business speakers include the former ESRI director, now its research affiliate, Frances Ruane; marketing expert George Yip of the China Europe International Business School; internationally-renowned psychologist, Adrian Furnham; and Dartmouth College management professor, and Superbosses author Sydney Finkelstein.

Pat Lam, the head coach of Connacht Rugby, will add a bit of sporting sparkle. The last time Kenny met a rugby coach at this event, former Leinster boss Joe Schmidt kicked a rugby ball into his face. Come on, Pat, you can do it...