The new office

After the introduction of Grampian 2, the office that we worked in was very small anyway and really not in the right place to work with. So another new office space was put forward and that would be the last one that I would work in.

This office is in the 'admin' part of the workplace so that all the supervisory staff would be in one place. In fact it has worked out very well with more work space and places for privacy etc.

And of course along with that we had to have a name change. A new manager had been put in place and it was decided, much against my and others better wishes that we would have a name change for the group.

The office and group I worked with had been known as 'Allocations' for more years than I can remember. As far as I was concerned that was good enough for all, and everybody knew when the word Allocations was used, what was meant.

But of course that was not good enough for the modern management style was it? Much of the rest of the operational part of the company has been converted to ' Service Delivery'. For instance instead of simple words like 'radio operator' they were now 'Service delivery Controllers'.

So our office had to join in this nonsense. We were now designated 'Service Delivery resources' and my new title was a 'Service delivery resources officer'. What a load of old bollocks! I made it clear at the time what I thought of it, but eventually got used to the new title. Nothing else really changed though.

We still worked hard and we were still short staffed most of the time. That never seemed to change as the more staff that were employed, just replaced those that left.

In the next blog I will start to wind up my time with Cardiff Bus and the time was fast coming when I would have to retire.

Grampian 2

Well by this time we had been working well with Grampian for a few years and had all bedded into the system. As I have said in the last blog there were faults with it and frustrations but I guess there is with all computer systems. Is there one that works perfectly?

But the system was creaking at the knees and Grampian had decided that they were going to stop updating it and a Grampian 2 was already in many companies. It was time for us to move on as well. The new system would bring other parts of the company into it as well, including the payroll.

This was another learning curve and one that I was to learn and then forget as I had to have an operation in the middle of the input. We all learned the operation of the system and once again a two part learning curve was put in place with both the old and new systems running at the same time until they both worked and the new one could take the place of the old.

In the middle of that I had my operation and was off for about nine weeks. I have had a hiatus hernia for years and it had been playing up more and more. The doctors eventually decided that a big operation was needed and I would be in hospital for a week with several weeks recovery after that. So that took nine weeks and in the middle of that the new system was put in place and I had to go back and learn it all again when I went back to work.

Grampian

Well, for those who have never used the Grampian system it is the one that is most used in the bus and staff allocation system. There is no point explaining to much here, as if you have used it you will know and if not well it would just take up to much time.

Suffice to say that all details of the duties the staff worked and the driver details, pay numbers, holidays, days taken off sick and many other details were put in the system. It was a steep learning curve and I was involved right at the beginning of it. Two men who were experts on the computer side were bought in, but they knew nothing of the day to day running of the Allocation side of the company.

As the supervisor who was my senior was on holidays I was there to input the details of the working side of it. This took a lot longer than was first thought as our job is very complicated and many changes took place over months before it was ready to go. Then there was a trial run were the computer system and the manual system were worked together for a few weeks until they were sure that everything was as it could be.

Eventually of course it went on-line and we were off. As with all changes, some took to it better than others. I enjoyed it from the start and had no problem. Others were not so keen and could not take to it. Two friends left the company partly due to this I think.

But the work went on as usual with others bought into the team. As with all large companies, the work goes on no matter who leaves.

We used this system for a few years and although there were faults and frustrating things with it we got used to it. And then Grampian 2 came in. More about that and the changes that came with it later.

Tickets and more

As I said in the last blog not all the life was checking tickets. If there was any major incident and we were in reach we could be called to go there.

This could include arguments between passenger and driver that had blown out of proportion, accidents between bus and car or sometimes pedestrians, or perhaps when the city was hosting an international rugby match and buses were pulled out of the city centre we would be sent to deal with that.

All in all the job was interesting and varied and of course there was promotion to the next level to work toward. This was called the G.D. or general duties inspector and was another move upward. Although in fact as junior inspectors we worked on most points as they were called the G.D.'s worked point work most of the time.

Point work as it was called was the static area that was covered by inspectors and included the Bus Station where you would deal with the buses that came in and out all the time, and the Castle point where you would deal with the fewer buses that used that area. This point was were my future career in Cardiff Bus changed for life but more of that much later.

The CBS or station point was the busiest of the lot and there would be two on at all times as buses came in every minute or so and you had to check the times and make sure that if a bus was due a relief driver then he or she turned up and on time and if not why not.

This was where the junior inspectors started to learn the ropes and had someone to guide them that knew what they were doing. The Castle point was seen as the easier point and you would be put on there after a while and left to run it on your own.

You could also get out of the way and have a cup of tea in the local cafe with no-one bothering you to much. You could also get caught having that tea so had to keep your eyes out! I once got caught reading a paper on the back seat of the spare bus we kept there and given a right bollocking!

But we slowly learned the ropes and then looked toward the promotion trail as other inspectors retired, much as the colleagues that I work with are doing now as I am due to retire. I was due for promotion if not to the next level but in monetary terms in 1988 and it all went hugely wrong one day. Read about this in the next blog.

Back on the buses!

Well it is now July 1977 and am back on the job and this time for good. I did not know that at the time of course but to be honest it felt like coming home. I still had a lot of friends on the job, my father still worked there and I was well known so the was no problem settling in.

Mark was five years old now and for the last three years or so I had seen him every day at about 12.30 onward but now he was starting school anyway so not being home quite as much was not a problem.

And when you worked for a bus company in those days overtime was part of the deal to earn a decent wage. We lived in a council house and had all the usual bills to pay so I,like most of my contemporaries worked 13 out of 14 days and overtime on several of them and thought nothing of it as it was part of life then.

I have to say that even today there are many drivers who work a lot of overtime. Not so many as in those days but it is not uncommon to work long hours in our industry although the laws have been tightened up now.

I still had my bus driving licence of course so went in as a driver straight away. We were still operating crew and one man operating buses back then and I went in with conductors for a while until a space became available on the OMO shifts. The years away had brought in more routes that were one man operated and many conductors had taken the driving test and were driving the new routes.

The old hands who would not drive one man buses were really on the way out and as the years passed all routes were changed to that type of operation.

As I have said in an earlier blog, I have always taken pride in my driving and it was put to good use the year after I came back. Drivers were invited to have a go at the 'bus driver of the year' competition and I decided to have a go at it. This was the local South Wales event to get into the nationals and through luck and a bit of skill I took first place in my area so I represented my company in the national event in Blackpool that year.

More on this and more in the next blog.

I become a bus driver!

Well this was back in 1970 and I had been a bus conductor for six months. You had to work for at least six months back then before you could apply for it. Like most young conductors I wanted that licence and to sit up front of that half cab. Check out the photo of the A.E.C. that I eventually was driving.

Way back then the training was done on 'crash box Guys' one of the old buses that we kept just for training. They were a half cab much like the one above and the gear boxes were the crash box type which for those who have never heard of them were boxes that did not have modern synchronized gears. If you could drive them you could drive anything that came your way.

We trained for about six weeks and then the Chief Inspector came out and checked out your driving standards. If he thought you were good enough you passed! That was it no other tests just the Chief. It was said at the time that if we had plenty of drivers you failed and if we were short you passed! They must have been short because I passed out.

Well then you are let loose on the general public lord help them and given a conductor. Just as it was when I first became a conductor you were the new boys and given whoever they wanted to give. I had some good ones and some bad ones I guess. The only thing was that my wife to who I just got married to said that she did not want me to have a female conductor.

I could not argue to much I guess because she had seen some of the problems that caused when male/female partnerships worked together for a long time.

The buses way back then were a real mixture and you soon learned to drive just about anything. We had preselect gearboxes, white stick Damliers, long Leylands, AEC's just about everything. I am not going to claim here that I was the best driver around but I have always taken a pride in my driving and like to think that I gave my conductors and passengers a good ride all in all.

We did have our moments though and when I had passed out my old driver 'Billy the Wombat' and myself used to race each other occasionally! This today would never be tolerated and rightly so, but back then with a quiet bus it was just a bit of fun.

And to end today's blog the next move for me and Cardiff Bus was the One Man Operator that would take over the driving of just about all bus firms but this was back in 1972 and was just about to be introduced. It was more money and for a young man recently married I was up for it big time. More in the next blog.