The Rule of Silence
Tower Hill tube station is, in my opinion, one of the most annoying places I’ve ever been. It’s part of my commute, so I pass through most days, and over 4 years a number of little irritants have glommed together to make the place a fingernail scrape on the blackboard of my sanity.
Take, for instance, the announcements. There is often someone marching around on the platform announcing the arrival of trains over the address system. You would think there’d be some sort of cut-off mechanism in place so that if a train approaches the station whilst an automated message is being broadcast (“for your safety and security, this station is monitored with CCTV cameras” and other such dull crap), the announcer would get priority.
But no. What actually happens is the announcer and the automated system speak over each other, making it impossible to tell what either of them are saying. Idiots. Occasionally the station controller will need to alert a member of staff or find the parent of a lost child, and guess what? They just join the scrum. At least once a month I stand there shaking my head in bemusement listening to three people shouting over each other. It’s ridiculous.
A simple way to deal with this would be if the automated announcements were of any use whatsoever. What’s that, robot voice? There’s no interchange between Monument and Bank station? Well shoot, it’s only been like that for a frickin’ YEAR. Do you really need to remind me every 3 minutes? What, are you worried some commuter has just returned from a year-long safari and will go postal if he gets to Monument and finds he has to walk to Bank at street level because you didn’t forewarn him?
Worst of all, however, is this one: “There is a good service runnning on all Underground lines”. This is in direct contravention of the Unix philosophy’s Rule of Silence (some may also say it’s in direct contravention of the laws of probability too, but I digress).
“Well-designed Unix programs with nothing interesting or surprising to say should shut up.”
The Art of Unix Programming, Chapter 11
Listen, robot voice: I expect trains to be running on time. I don’t want you to proudly announce that things are as they should be. Tell me when something is wrong. If trains are running late, tell me. If a station is unexpectedly closed, tell me.
If nothing unplanned is going on, however, SHUT UP!
Recent Comments