To be clear I wasn’t saying street to seat drivers can’t be as good as anyone else (I was one myself!). My point is that as an mentor/instructor I’d rather teach or assess someone who has previous experience and a known quantity, than someone who is brand new and has literally never been into the cab of a train. My previous TOC took on many street to seat trainees, some were great, some absolutely terrible. Equally the trainers reported having also had big problems with ex guards/platform staff who thought they knew it all. It was difficult to predict which would be which and ultimately, as an instructor, it’s your license on the line.
At my place, off the street has been frowned upon, more because they often need more time than is allocated / management desire, and this can lead to problems, as well as put instructors under pressure. In terms of station staff, generally most with basic stations experience are fine, but anyone from a *supervisory* stations grade is often a right problem indeed, with attitude (or even cultural) issues as described above. Ex guards are felt to be the best, but there's a slight problem with that one!
As a general point the railway industry does seem to have a problem with attracting more than it’s fair of people with a massive sense of entitlement and general attitude problem. I really wish I knew why that was!
This may well get to the root of the issue, though again who knows why that is. Without wishing to sound snotty, it is often the case that the industry can accommodate people who either would struggle to hold a job in many other industries, or pay some people a rather higher salary than they'd be able to command elsewhere. As I say, not wishing to offend anyone, but it is what it is.
Also agreed here. There are quite a few ex coppers in the grade, mostly I think because the railway seems to appeal to people who are used to working for large institutional employers. Also they’re likely to have a fair bit of useful life experience to draw from, and a proven ability to work well under pressure.
Ex police seem fine in my experiences. It's the ex military who *can* be extremely objectionable. My place has more than a few in various roles (not driver, to be fair) who have caused a lot of problems with their attitudes and behaviours, and unfortunately they regularly get into conflict situations because they are good at learning lists, but not so good at *understanding* what they are doing, which gets them into problems. Top management seems to like them because they get through assessments, but they then become an utter nightmare to manage or work with at local level. And when I say nightmare, this is no understatement.
