Transit survey hairballs
For the past week we have been parrying a survey from Genesee Transportation Council (GTC).
Do they have any idea what a hornet’s nest they’re treading into surveying me?
Genesee Transportation Council is an arm of Rochester Genesee Regional Transportation Authority (RGRTA), what administered my former employer, Regional Transit Service (RTS), a public company, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I endured employ at Regional Transit, parrying politics and utter madness. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.
Worst of all is that upper management seemed oblivious to our clientele.
Park-and-Ride passengers were okay, but city passengers were the dregs of society, the people that mugged and cheated you.
The major unwritten rule among bus-drivers was “DON’T GET SHOT!”
Upper management was loathe to consort with these people — they didn’t exist.
“Ride with the riffraff; are you kidding?”
Okay, they’re surveying me.
I’d be a user of public transit — I once was.
I’m 67; I can’t drive forever.
But I’m out in the boonies with no bus-service.
They wanted me to log all my trips on a specific date, and claimed I could do all this online.
The survey was comprised of two parts: -1) who lived at our house, and -2) the trip-log.
The first part was supposed to take five minutes online, and it did.
Now for the second part, the trip-log, a supposed 15 minutes.
HAIRBALL NUMBER-ONE:
Were they dreaming? 15 minutes for the web-generator, but after about an hour I had successfully entered one-fifth of my trip-log.
And that was just me. Next I had to enter my wife.
It was incredibly complicated.
Should I have expected any better? After all, Genesee Transportation Council is an arm of RGRTA — not of the real world.
I have a college degree myself, so technical issues are somewhat challenging, but not impossible.
I can’t imagine Granny trying to online that trip-log.
It ain’t user-friendly. You can’t just intuit it.
I had to figure out every step; what they were actually doing.
Beyond that, Genesee Transportation Council wanted me to record every trip, even those by foot.
So I did, silly as that seemed, and their online search couldn’t find a street-address for some of the places I logged, which were in a park (gasp).
Okay, I give up!
I could also call in my trip-log to an 800-number.
Maybe an actual human being, if I get one, can make sense of my non-addressable foot-trips.
HAIRBALL NUMBER-TWO:
I unholstered my Smartphone and fired it up.
I make all my phonecalls via cellphone.
Verizon, my cellphone provider, wants to do an upgrade to my Smartphone; no details,
Okay, let it. —Delay number-one.
The upgrade took about five-ten minutes.
NOW WHAT? Can they ever leave well-enough alone?
My Smartphone is all different. Even the Motorola “M” icon is now red. It used to be white.
I wish I’d known it was gonna be this drastic!
Another new icon. Yes, indeed it’s phonecalls, but the search function for my contact-list is gone.
Actually it’s still there, now under a new spyglass icon in a different place.
CONTINUING.......
Not that it matters. Genesee Transportation Council is an 800-number I key in.
So I keyed it in, and got sent to a message-machine.
—Delay number-two.
I left message number-one.
They apparently called back during my nap, and in my stupor I inadvertently refused their call.
They were now in my “missed calls,” so I called back the next day.
Again, the message-machine.
I left message number-two.
They apparently called back twice, and I missed them both times.
So I tried again, preparing to leave message number-three.
I was gonna tell them this would be my final message. I don’t have time for phone-tag.
But I got a real person, the one who’d been calling me back.
“I see you did the first part online,” she said.
“But the second part was impossible,” I said.
“We’ve been hearing that,” she said.
I began recounting my trip-log.
My separate foot-trips within the park became one motor-trip to the park, and then back home.
So much for the foot-trip requirement.
We then moved on to the so-called “comment section,” where I was asked various questions which reflected my attitude toward bus-transit.
CONFUSION ALERT!
I noticed their never-ending misconception that all trips are into or out of Rochester.
Their presumption was I work in Rochester, which I don’t.
I’m retired, and even when I did work it was not in Rochester, which they always mistakenly presume.
Most trips I make are around the Rochester outskirts; few into Rochester proper.
I also found it interesting their questions had answers that could conflict.
I was told that didn’t matter.
I’d be inclined to use bus-transit, but it has to be going where I’m going.
“You should know I once drove bus for Regional Transit,” I said; “so I’m not a reliable source.”
“Well, they probably didn’t know that,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter; they picked you.”
But Genesee Transportation Council is not in the the real world; not if they presume all trips are into or out of Rochester.
It’s the old waazoo: go through the motions, but “keep payin’ my bloated salary.”
RE: “I’m out in the boonies....” —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.
Do they have any idea what a hornet’s nest they’re treading into surveying me?
Genesee Transportation Council is an arm of Rochester Genesee Regional Transportation Authority (RGRTA), what administered my former employer, Regional Transit Service (RTS), a public company, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I endured employ at Regional Transit, parrying politics and utter madness. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.
Worst of all is that upper management seemed oblivious to our clientele.
Park-and-Ride passengers were okay, but city passengers were the dregs of society, the people that mugged and cheated you.
The major unwritten rule among bus-drivers was “DON’T GET SHOT!”
Upper management was loathe to consort with these people — they didn’t exist.
“Ride with the riffraff; are you kidding?”
Okay, they’re surveying me.
I’d be a user of public transit — I once was.
I’m 67; I can’t drive forever.
But I’m out in the boonies with no bus-service.
They wanted me to log all my trips on a specific date, and claimed I could do all this online.
The survey was comprised of two parts: -1) who lived at our house, and -2) the trip-log.
The first part was supposed to take five minutes online, and it did.
Now for the second part, the trip-log, a supposed 15 minutes.
HAIRBALL NUMBER-ONE:
Were they dreaming? 15 minutes for the web-generator, but after about an hour I had successfully entered one-fifth of my trip-log.
And that was just me. Next I had to enter my wife.
It was incredibly complicated.
Should I have expected any better? After all, Genesee Transportation Council is an arm of RGRTA — not of the real world.
I have a college degree myself, so technical issues are somewhat challenging, but not impossible.
I can’t imagine Granny trying to online that trip-log.
It ain’t user-friendly. You can’t just intuit it.
I had to figure out every step; what they were actually doing.
Beyond that, Genesee Transportation Council wanted me to record every trip, even those by foot.
So I did, silly as that seemed, and their online search couldn’t find a street-address for some of the places I logged, which were in a park (gasp).
Okay, I give up!
I could also call in my trip-log to an 800-number.
Maybe an actual human being, if I get one, can make sense of my non-addressable foot-trips.
HAIRBALL NUMBER-TWO:
I unholstered my Smartphone and fired it up.
I make all my phonecalls via cellphone.
Verizon, my cellphone provider, wants to do an upgrade to my Smartphone; no details,
Okay, let it. —Delay number-one.
The upgrade took about five-ten minutes.
NOW WHAT? Can they ever leave well-enough alone?
My Smartphone is all different. Even the Motorola “M” icon is now red. It used to be white.
I wish I’d known it was gonna be this drastic!
Another new icon. Yes, indeed it’s phonecalls, but the search function for my contact-list is gone.
Actually it’s still there, now under a new spyglass icon in a different place.
CONTINUING.......
Not that it matters. Genesee Transportation Council is an 800-number I key in.
So I keyed it in, and got sent to a message-machine.
—Delay number-two.
I left message number-one.
They apparently called back during my nap, and in my stupor I inadvertently refused their call.
They were now in my “missed calls,” so I called back the next day.
Again, the message-machine.
I left message number-two.
They apparently called back twice, and I missed them both times.
So I tried again, preparing to leave message number-three.
I was gonna tell them this would be my final message. I don’t have time for phone-tag.
But I got a real person, the one who’d been calling me back.
“I see you did the first part online,” she said.
“But the second part was impossible,” I said.
“We’ve been hearing that,” she said.
I began recounting my trip-log.
My separate foot-trips within the park became one motor-trip to the park, and then back home.
So much for the foot-trip requirement.
We then moved on to the so-called “comment section,” where I was asked various questions which reflected my attitude toward bus-transit.
CONFUSION ALERT!
I noticed their never-ending misconception that all trips are into or out of Rochester.
Their presumption was I work in Rochester, which I don’t.
I’m retired, and even when I did work it was not in Rochester, which they always mistakenly presume.
Most trips I make are around the Rochester outskirts; few into Rochester proper.
I also found it interesting their questions had answers that could conflict.
I was told that didn’t matter.
I’d be inclined to use bus-transit, but it has to be going where I’m going.
“You should know I once drove bus for Regional Transit,” I said; “so I’m not a reliable source.”
“Well, they probably didn’t know that,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter; they picked you.”
But Genesee Transportation Council is not in the the real world; not if they presume all trips are into or out of Rochester.
It’s the old waazoo: go through the motions, but “keep payin’ my bloated salary.”
RE: “I’m out in the boonies....” —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.
posted by BobbaLew at 10:53 AM
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