He does look a bit of a kn*b in that photo and it is certainly bad PR. I wonder if the situation could have been handled a little more sensitively? Apparently he was handing out his business card to people he’d ordered out of first class which seems somewhat bizarre.
I'd agree with the photo looking bad. But I don't see how much more sensitively it could have been handled. People wanted a free ride in first class, they were told no, they bitched about it on Twitter. It's not like there's a compromise position.
And there were other people sitting in that first class compartment who HAD paid to be there. "Manager sits there doing sweet FA whilst people get a free ride, I pay £10,000 a year for my ticket!" is just as bad PR.
The business card thing seems a bit bizarre, although I suspect he was trying to make it clear who he was and why he was doing it. Taking ownership of it.
The passengers are wrong on this one. It's just the standard self-entitlement. "I want to be in coach 1 with everyone else, to be at the front in Victoria, but don't think I should have to stand, so I'll sit somewhere I'm not allowed and moan on Twitter when I'm called out on it".
I read in a newspaper article that an ill woman (sorry, not pregnant, I remembered wrong) asked if she could sit down and he refused.
Neil, you know as well as I do from London Midland that anyone on a busy train mysteriously feels "ill" when they decide they want to sit down in first class without paying and they're challenged by authority.
This all happened in the very front coach, which is always busy because everyone wants to be first off in London. It happens on every single train into London.