SEPTA's letting loose

The cranky Negadelphian I keep buried inside me, the one that wants to show a certain finger to Yellow Tags while I push my granny cart back from the market, really wants to say, "HOW UNPROFESSIONAL" to SEPTA's backhanded apology for a lack of communication surrounding a service interruption during Thursday's rush hour.

Luckily that curmudgeon still has a good twenty years and a stint at the Adelphia House before he's ready to spread his wings and fly, which is why I have nothing but props for SEPTA's reaction.

It's a lengthy response, almost a rant, posted on SEPTA's website. Apparently passengers glued to their iPhones were a little disgruntled that SEPTA didn't take to Twitter and Facebook the moment train #9559 broke down. Instead, frustrated riders had to wait the length of a sitcom to find out what kind of delays to expect, mostly between 15 and 30 minutes.

In all fairness, SEPTA could have made an announcement as soon as they knew there was a delay, but consider the reaction. Telling today's passengers to expect a delay without informing them how long, what trains, and without handing them a broom to fly home on is like screaming fire in a crowded basement full of drunk teenagers, and SEPTA needed this time to assess the situation and brace themselves for the frothing hate every employee was about to receive.

Basically, suck it up. Shit happens. You can read the entire post, but this is the highlight:

So should we announce that the train is having a problem at minute 2 when we don't yet know how we're going to fix it? Some may say - yes SEPTA - talk to us - and some may say Duh SEPTA, we're stuck on the train or waiting on the platform - tell us something we don't already know.

Yeah, they said that.