Discrimination afoot at South West Trains?...

[Broken Viking]

Hail all... :mumum:
Just to fill you all in (As I've not been around for a while) I recently applied for a ticket office position with SWT, which not only is a position that they're desperate to fill as quickly as possible, I was probabally the only person who was willing to do the job at one of his local stations and travel anywhere within the SWT network at very short notice to provide cover where it was needed...Even if that meant a 2+ hour ride back home after shift! hock:

Well...Just this morning, I got a response back from South West Trains, and aye, my application has been unsuccessful. For what reason I don't know, but I know for a fact there was absolutely bugger all wrong with my application or anything attached to it. :angry5:

Now here's one thing that I noticed: On the assesment and selection day (Attendance by invite only) there were about 18 of us; About 4-5 of us were Caucasian, the rest being of African or South American origin. At the interview stage, there were four of us who had made it; Myself and one other Caucasian person, one African gentleman and one lady who was possibly Southern American. Looking at the statistics from the interviews (You'd be surprised what info you can find on people's MySpace weblogs! :toothy10 it would appear that the latter have been offered jobs, and yet myself and the other Caucasian bloke have been told that we're "unsuccessful"... :confused:
Call me paranoid, but I have a feeling that South West Trains might be playing the race card here...And it's something that I may well use against them when I go and see about getting my application reconsidered. :mumum:

On the other front: There is also the fact that Aspergers (A learning disability that I've been "blessed" with... :mad has a proven track record of screwing up job interviews from the point of view of the interviewee (I have a large stack of letters here, all saying "Thank you for your application, but you have not been successful" from the last three years alone.) and it's clear to me that South West Train's representative may not have taken this into consideration when evaluating my interview. Therefore I ought to have a damn good chance at a "re-trial" of my application - Especially considering that I proved myself to be more than capable skills-wise! (See www.shl.com for the competancy tests that South West Trains use. Beware the bad page coding though!)
So we could have a rejection based upon my disability too...Which IIRC is completely illegal under the Disability Discrimination Act, except maybe for safety-critical positions where health and safety is an overriding issue. As I deliberateley selected a non safety-critical job to avoid such a thing, the "health and safety" aspect does not even enter the picture! :mumum:

Therefore, we can conclude that either way, South West Trains could be dropped in the crap for discrimination based on race or disability - Neither of which are legally acceptable. I'm not planning to go millitant on it initially, but if there isn't a damn good and legally tenable reason for why my application (And thus my career and 25-year plan) was rejected, South West Trains might find themselves regretting their ill-informed decision... :eek::angry5:

As for getting money so that I can enjoy myself and buy the things that I could do with (I.E: New clothing, food, a modern spec PC, etc) it looks like I'll have to switch to bank robbery, phishing peoples PayPal accounts and other assorted "Black Hat" work in the meantime. Now I've always been proud of my hacking skills, but I've never wanted to use them for negative and/or criminal purposes... ad::angry5:

Farewell...And you'll probabally see me on Police 5 soon... :mumum:
>> Death <<

 

[Darandio]

Heres looking forward to the next edition of Crimewatch

Seriously though, good luck with the appeal.

 

[Tom]

Race discrimination laws were certainly aimed at helping the "other-than-caucasian" community, thought up by our wonderful politicians but it is certainly backfiring in a lot of cases.

And, I enjoy doing white hat work myself.

 

[kettlefan]

good luck with whatever you do next. That is a sad story, I have my NR selection day next week, hopefully it'll be ok.

 

[Coxster]

I'll have to switch to bank robbery, phishing peoples PayPal accounts and other assorted "Black Hat" work in the meantime. Now I've always been proud of my hacking skills, but I've never wanted to use them for negative and/or criminal purposes... ad::angry5:

Yeah, because that's a good advert for you, and of course it's fully acceptable as long as it doesn't affect you :roll: I hope your heard earned money gets taken away from you too, and you serve some sort of punishment when caught. If that is the case then I think SWT and any possible colleagues of yours got off quite lightly.

 

[Daniel]

....maybe he was joking?

 

[Coxster]

....maybe he was joking?

Well the two smilies used hardly backed that theory up - a sad face and an angry one. Also in a thread regarding unfair treatment probably isn't the place to "joke" about that sort of thing anyway, particuarly with no "joke" smilies...

 

[Nick W]

On the other front: There is also the fact that Aspergers (A learning disability that I've been "blessed" with... :mad has a proven track record of screwing up job interviews from the point of view of the interviewee (I have a large stack of letters here, all saying "Thank you for your application, but you have not been successful" from the last three years alone.) and it's clear to me that South West Train's representative may not have taken this into consideration when evaluating my interview. Therefore I ought to have a damn good chance at a "re-trial" of my application - Especially considering that I proved myself to be more than capable skills-wise! (See www.shl.com for the competancy tests that South West Trains use. Beware the bad page coding though!)

I'm really sorry but I don't think that working in a ticket office is suitable for someone with aspergers syndrome. Note that one of the criteria for aspergers syndrome is no impairment to learning ability, often enhancement so you may with to look into that.

 

[yorkie]

I've never heard anyone describe Asperger's syndrome as a disability before, although each person with Asperger's is different. I certainly wouldn't think of someone like Nick W as in any way "disabled", after all he is able to do things that other people are unable to.

I doubt SWT are racist, I have seen absolutely no evidence for that - on the contrary, in fact. It appears that you have absolutely no evidence for your claim, other than the fact that you are unhappy that you did not get the job because of your race.

As for working in a ticket office, you may find that the number 1 priority will be for people who are good at dealing with the public. In SWT's opinion, you may not be the best person in that respect and unfortunately you have to accept that on this occasion (don't let that stop you trying again elsewhere though), also do you have experience of working with the public? The people who got the jobs may have!

 

[Nick W]

As for working in a ticket office, you may find that the number 1 priority will be for people who are good at dealing with the public. In SWT's opinion, you may not be the best person in that respect and unfortunately you have to accept that on this occasion (don't let that stop you trying again elsewhere though), also do you have experience of working with the public? The people who got the jobs may have!

Very true, however I reckon there are many jobs in the railway that favour someone with such "disibility" like signaller, driver, timetabler, fitter, engineer, accountant and even website designer (given the state of the train line based sites for example).

 

[AlexS]

Is the 'disibility' as it's known unpredicatable in any way? I suspect it would instantly kybosh any safety critical job role including signalman, driver etc, and also possibly passenger facing work, if the company have any lingering doubts?

Imagine having Nick on the station - rather than the information you need quickly, you get a full explanation and debate of whether the information you want is right or wrong and why that might be the case

 

[ChrisM]

but if there isn't a damn good and legally tenable reason for why my application (And thus my career and 25-year plan) was rejected, South West Trains might find themselves regretting their ill-informed decision... :eek::angry5:

As for getting money so that I can enjoy myself and buy the things that I could do with (I.E: New clothing, food, a modern spec PC, etc) it looks like

I have never heard such crap.
SWT have messed up your 25 year plan and now you can't get a new computer and clothes. cratch:

On the assesment and selection day (Attendance by invite only) there were about 18 of us; About 4-5 of us were Caucasian, the rest being of African or South American origin. At the interview stage, there were four of us who had made it;

You didn't make it and maybe the others were better suited to the role, just accept it and move on.
Reading between the lines it looks like you are trying to use your disabilty to your advantage and get SWT to change there minds which is wrong, and it will do you more harm then good next time you apply.

 

[332 > 444]

1st off people, check your urls dont want you all to get phished by this guy. I hope that 'black hat' term aint a race term.

What i dont get is are you bothered that the ethnics have got jobs and you and the other white guy didnt? Next of all you are pulling the disability card.

Dont matter if you passed the test parts, you may have bombed the interview. Competency based interviews and selection centres are completely fair. When i had my interview with TfL (which i flopped) i didnt think once that they are judging me by my apperance.

So youve got to think about your interview performance instead of pulling a discrimination card.

LMAO @ 25-year plan, if you wanna rob and teef etc, you can do another 25 year plan - in the slammer.

Try again and you're willing to travel, Virgin WC are recruiting for station assistants at Euston.

 

[Tom]

Black hat is a hacking term, not racist at all.

Two types of hackers generally, black hats and white hats. White hats are generally those employed by big companies to try and break into systems, or do it and then advise the owner how to secure it. Black hats, well, are those people who like to steal your PayPal account, etc.

 

[Nick W]

Imagine having Nick on the station - rather than the information you need quickly, you get a full explanation and debate of whether the information you want is right or wrong and why that might be the case

More like the other way round, I'm usually straight to the point and avoid any "smalltalk" because it's difficult for me.

Is the 'disibility' as it's known unpredicatable in any way? I suspect it would instantly kybosh any safety critical job role including signalman, driver etc, and also possibly passenger facing work, if the company have any lingering doubts?

No it makes a person far more predictable and far less likely to diverge from procedures and routines. The less passenger facing, the better.

Competency based interviews and selection centres are completely fair.

For a job like ticket selling you're probably right. For a job that doesn't require communicating face to face to people, poor performance in an interview does not really represent one's ability to do a job.

 

[Coxster]

I doubt SWT are racist, I have seen absolutely no evidence for that - on the contrary, in fact. It appears that you have absolutely no evidence for your claim, other than the fact that you are unhappy that you did not get the job because of your race.

If 'Death' were to get the job then the members of the other race(s) could say exactly the same thing! This racism stuff is simply an excuse IMHO.

As for working in a ticket office, you may find that the number 1 priority will be for people who are good at dealing with the public.

Indeed. Two things that are looked for are past customer service skills and cash handling, for example someone who has worked in a shop is likely to have both of these.

 

[Broken Viking]

Hail All!
Everything above read and noted. I'm going to post my reply soon, but as it'll be a long post (And I plan to get to bed in a minute! ) I'll do that when I have sufficient time on my hands.

That'll teach me to post whilst I'm not fully awake and in a bad mood! Guess it serves me right though...

Farewell...
>> Death <<