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Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

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Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#391

Post by [deleted] »

db48x wrote: post #328
BloondAndDoom wrote: post #131

I feel like we lost humanity somewhere in modern world. I grew up in 3rd world country and if this were to happen, train would literally stop somewhere, anywhere. (With the assumption it’s safe from crewing into another train). But the idea that you go 55 minutes just because of policy; and skip 15 stations is crazy to me. Again with the assumptions that it can safely stop somewhere for 5m and I’m pretty sure the ans…

Same here. An Amtrak train would just stop at the next convenient road crossing, if there were really something preventing them from stopping at the scheduled station. Most Amtrak stations don't even have staff, or any way to prevent people from coming and going, so this would most likely involve construction on the station platform itself. That’s fairly rare but the last time I took the Zephyr headed east there was…

[deleted]

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#392

Post by elygre »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #307
BloondAndDoom wrote: post #131

I feel like we lost humanity somewhere in modern world. I grew up in 3rd world country and if this were to happen, train would literally stop somewhere, anywhere. (With the assumption it’s safe from crewing into another train). But the idea that you go 55 minutes just because of policy; and skip 15 stations is crazy to me. Again with the assumptions that it can safely stop somewhere for 5m and I’m pretty sure the ans…

You're touching on points that Ayn Rand touched on in Atlas Shrugged , which as it happens uses the dynamics of the running of a railway as a metaphor for organisational incompetence and which opens on a scene of railway workers refusing to take initiative and following policy blindly. Where she started to go a little weird is she thought anyone who had an idea had the right to just go do that, and society can go han…

Your quote is missing a crucial bit. The full quote is «we're not registered to do so, so we are on the wrong tracks».

You were supposed to take the last exit, to be on the local road instead of the highway. No, we cannot let you off on the highway. We are not allowed to stop here. There are no stops. We wait for another exit. Sorry.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#394

Post by modo_mario »

rplnt wrote: post #245
nephihaha wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Honestly, it should be an obligation. DB should make it one for themselves. DB carries millions of people a year that do not speak the language. Important information like route changes should be available to them. English just happens to be the most likely language to be understood at least enough to ask staff/other passengers as to what is going on.

If preventing people that struggle with the local language from getting confused or missing stuff is the goal then they're likely better off doing it in Turkish or Arab.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#395

Post by hylaride »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #371
Zealotux wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a massive German company you heard of, this sounds more like the typical German philosophy of strictly following the process -- as absurd as it might be -- and refusing to take initiative for anything that is not explicitly defined as one's responsibility. As a French, the culture shock was brutal and I never really got around that work attitude. I went through a similar issue back when I used to take a…

The general reason is, the rule exists for a reason, and the "low worker" does not understand the bigger picture, so you should follow it blindly before doing something harmful you can't foresee. It's not always working well, but to be fair, also not always bad. Knowing how much you can stretch the rules can be an art which takes a long time to acquire.

Some cultures are more sticklers for creating and following rules and bureaucracy than others, though.

A good example: Here in North America I'll jaywalk without a thought if there's no traffic. In Germany, you'll get grandmothers calling you a child-killer for setting a bad example if you did the same.

Another example: Both France and Germany spend roughly the same amount (in raw Euros) on their militaries. France (which ALSO spends and develops a lot of their own kit) has a functional and effective military, including the only non-American nuclear aircraft carriers, and a bunch of nuclear attack and ballistic submarines and it's own nuclear deterrent. Germany is barely able to maintain their much smaller infrastructure because of its ineffective bureaucracy (there was a scandal a few years ago where over 80% of their euro fighters were combat ineffective due to lack of maintenance).

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#396

Post by modo_mario »

sho_hn wrote: post #180
manarth wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And French, as Germany is adjacent to France. There are train connections to Scandinavia, so let's add Swedish, Danish and Finnish. Also Dutch and Polish to accommodate the other adjacent countries.

This is the sort of immature "well, actually" response that you can't afford anymore once you actually take responsibility for things. I wish more people trained themselves to have a "what if I had to do it" habit before having an opinion. Imagine you're in charge of the train network. You have to pay for the announcements on trains. You can't reasonanbly pay 10 announcements because that's silly and expensive. If yo…

>If you add any language other than German, which are you going to add?

Given the demographics? Turkish or arab

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#398

Post by abigail95 »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #246
croes wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want to waste the time of an ambulance and emergency doctor just to be able to get off a train, which could mean that emergency services are lacking elsewhere?

Not a good idea to abuse EMS ever. But certainly given a sample size of enough people, some will invariably have mental breakdowns or panic attacks from being held against their will necessitating EMS. Judging and chastising people having real panic attacks as fakers is fucking idiotic bullshit. Pushing people to the breaking point with brinkmanship games will cause all sorts of unnecessary drama and workarounds as a…

I'm abusing one government department due to suffering abuse from another. If that causes a different kind of staffing shortage - that's something I don't have control over, but has the same root cause as the DB incompetence.

In my case because I do have not mild but moderate autism and panic disorder, it would genuinely feel like a heart attack if that happened to me. I wouldn't be lying about my symptoms.

The problem with that is - why do I get access to this "out" by being able to call EMS to get off the train? (Provided you agree with me that I would be a valid call). Why does everyone else have to suffer?

My worldview is they don't. DB wants to take you past 15 stations? Here's a mechanism to stop them.

I'm agreeing it's an abuse of the system, but it's valid because it scales. If there was a flood of EMS calls every time DB skipped 15 stations - DB blinks first.

Maybe a better example from me would have been an emergency stop button?

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#399

Post by mikkupikku »

bombcar wrote: post #348
mystifyingpoi wrote: post #308

The term "kidnapped" is kinda over the top, but I can understand the author. I've travelled with Polish trains a lot when studying, and there were a few situations like this. Especially frustrating, if the train stops because of "some issue" while you can literally see the platform 200m away. No, you can't get out and walk the track (which will be guaranteed to be empty, because well, the train is broken) and take a…

We had similar occurrences on Amtrak but there was a trick - the conductor could let people out of a stopped train to “smoke” on their own reconnaissance and risk. And if you went to smoke with your bag and disappeared, well, they never saw it.

I was in this sort of circumstance on a SEPTA train (using the same rails and stations as Amtrak fwiw) and they let us walk to the next station with no pretext. It was just the common sense thing to do and the SEPTA personnel running that train felt empowered to exercise common sense.

The more bureaucratic an organization becomes, the more inhuman it becomes. An unwillingness to bend rules when the circumstance rationally calls for it is extremely dangerous. One might think that Germans in particular would be highly tuned to this problem, but no. They still put following orders first. Typical.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#400

Post by tuetuopay »

indiantinker wrote: post #17

DB is weird. They seem to make their own rules and then run the game and “dont tell the rules to anyone”. I was on my way to catch a flight from Munich to my home (Madrid). I didn’t knew that apparently at one point the train splits into two parts and the front part goes to the airport and the other part just goes to the nearby cattle farms and comes back in 3 hours. Google Maps - No idea Citymapper - what? English a…

This is pretty common in other countries. I almost got screwed multiple times by SNCF (french trains) where they don't announce which half of the train goes where on the speakers. Even in the official app, it's buried deep: for some reason, it's under "Travel Details" and not "Train Details".

It was partially on me because there are assigned seats and carriages, but I was late and had to jump in the train. But still no vocal announcement of "cars x to y go to z, the others go to w".

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