Jon WorthJan 26

How do I overcome my railway Groucho Marx problem? 🤔

It's not “I Don’t Want to Belong to Any Club That Will Accept Me as a Member” but “Why would any company in the railway sector consider me to work for them, as there’s nothing I know they don’t know already”

But I do need to find paid work, somehow. Question is how and for whom?

Explained 👇
https://jonworth.eu/how-do-i-overcome-my-railway-groucho-marx-problem/

How do I overcome my railway Groucho Marx problem?

"I Don’t Want to Belong to Any Club That Will Accept Me as a Member" Groucho Marx is supposed to have said. And I have come to the view that I am facing something similar in my railway work. "Why would any company in the railway sector consider me to [...]

Jon Worth
Show threadPhil Dennis-JordanJan 26
@jon I mean, more generally in other industries, consultants get paid a lot of money to tell management what they should already know. The chances of the information sinking in are just much higher when it comes from a highly-paid consultant rather than lower-ranked employees. But I suppose hiring said consultants presupposes that there is some kind of institutional desire for improvement. (Whether genuine or not.) And it sounds like this is rare among European railway companies.
Show threadJon Worth
@pmdj Right. If the company has no desire to improve, whatever I could tell them is not going to work (and working for them is probably going to be disheartening). If a company does have a desire to improve, they would logically know already everything I could tell them, hence there'd be no point!
Jan 26 at 12:54pmWeb
Show threadPhil Dennis-JordanJan 26
@jon I don't know if the latter is necessarily true. I'm not sure even the more well-meaning and well-run railway companies are necessarily aware - at a level where it could make a difference - of the many death-by-thousand-papercuts customer experience issues.
One thing that likely sets you apart is that you don't just ride the headline-grabbing main line services between big stations but have deep knowledge of the issues passengers run into in the more fringe reaches of the networks.
Show threadHraban (fiëé visuëlle)Jan 26
@pmdj @jon
Maybe one of the smaller rail companies? E.g. with HLB (Hessische Landesbahn) I get the impression they’re trying, but they struggle against DB all the time. But if they’re really trying, then they know their stuff and probably don’t need you (since they don’t serve international lines anyway). 🤔
Maybe try something with https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-Bahn_Bodensee (international regional rail), the work would be more political than technical?
S-Bahn Bodensee – Wikipedia