If you’ve been following the stories surrounding the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) then maybe you’ve heard about today’s little press scrum. If not, let me fill you in on the events of the past few weeks to bring you up to speed.

Criticism of Toronto’s transit authority began when a picture, and then another picture, of a sleeping TTC employee surfaced online. The picture showed a TTC ticket-taker asleep in his booth, feet kicked back, having a grand old nap. Following that, videos, pictures, and anecdotal reports began appearing online depicting TTC employees engaging in all manner of bad behaviour. Some were sleeping, some were rude, and some were taking ten to twenty minute coffee breaks with a bus load of passengers.

To me, some of this behaviour is excusable: if you’re working a ticket booth at 3 in the morning and had a rough sleep the night, or day, before, maybe you’ll doze off for a bit. In my opinion, so what, life goes on; that isn’t a big deal. I have a bit harder time understanding and accepting an extended coffee break with a bus full of passengers, trying to get to or from work in a reasonable amount of time. In one video that I’ve seen, the driver actually enters a Tim Horton’s, orders a coffee and sits down to chat with other patrons while the bus idles for fifteen minutes.

The TTC excused some of this behaviour: drivers sometimes miss their scheduled coffee breaks, drivers have to pee, etc. But they wouldn’t stand behind a twenty minute coffee break, nor should they, and in a memo to their employees over the weekend, prohibited this kind of behaviour and encouraged all TTC employees to pull their socks up and to shape up (I personally would’ve used the pun get in gear!).

Well, today the head of TTC’s union, Bob Kinnear, spoke out against the terrible Toronto population for being so incredibly mean to his members. Here is a bit of his speech to the press,

“Listen folks, stop harassing people who are doing their jobs. Stop insulting them. Stop waving your phone cameras in their faces as you get on the bus or streetcar. Stop spitting on them. Stop calling them lazy and overpaid.”

Now no one—pretty much no one—deserves to be spit on. No one deserves to have something shoved in their face. But I get the impression from these comments, that Kinnear believes the people of Toronto have no good reason for the frustration and resentment they feel towards TTC employees. Kinnear doesn’t seem to get it. “Stop harassing people who are doing their jobs,” he says.

Bob, these people were caught not doing their jobs, that’s why they’re being harassed!

I don’t support spitting, I don’t support waving cellphone cameras in people’s faces but I do support getting the service that you deserve (and pay for) when you ride public transit.

If I were suspected of being a poor teacher, if I were caught sleeping at my desk while the kids ran wild or leaving the room for twenty minutes on a break, I would suspect I’d be under strict surveillance. I would be upset, and unnerved, to have parents coming into my classroom with video cameras, watching my every move but if I’m not doing my job, then I’m not doing my job—I’ve gotta face the consequences.

Of course, a few bad apples ruin the whole bunch but whatever. We applaud the TTC employees who are doing a great job—who are doing their job—and we publicize those who aren’t. These are the realities of living in a consumer-oriented, technology-drive society—and living in a big city. I know that Bob Kinnear said what he said because he has to, because he has to defend his members, but come on, Bob. Be real. He could have apologize, he could have admitted the wrongs that some of his employees have committed but he chose the path of complete denial. Stop harassing my people, they’re working hard. Yeah, OK, Bob.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.