Metro mania: Temper tantrum gone berserk
Shanghai Metro handles some 12 million passengers every day and naturally, from time to time, there are problems. Like the trains suffer signal glitches or a station attendant fails to retrieve items lost by passengers.
These things happen, given the size of the mammoth subway network. The Metro operator insists that all attendants and hotline operators remain polite and calm, even in the face of provocation, and that they should try their best to settle passengers' problems.
But a recent audio clip of a man using abusive language against multiple Metro staffers over the phone that appeared on social media has aroused the public's wrath.
The man, who identified himself as Mr Huang, is heard threatening to "tread down to the Metro stations" if he didn’t get what he wanted. He claims to know the names of many station chiefs, often saying: “I’m not someone you want to trifle with. I will crush you like a hot knife through butter.”
The whole conversation is punctuated with filthy language amid Huang’s sneering attitude.
Shanghai Metro told Shanghai Daily that it reported Huang to relevant authorities for repeatedly threatening, vilifying and trying to wind up the staff, thereby disturbing their daily work routine and stopping other passengers from getting on the hotline to air their problems.
It all started on August 8 last year. According to Huang, he got on a Metro Line 2 train at East Nanjing Road Station. He was going to get off at Century Park Station. But when the train arrived at Century Avenue Station — two stops before his destination — the broadcast announcement told passengers the train will terminate at the next stop, Shanghai Science and Technology Museum Station.
Huang called the complaint line, arguing that the broadcast announcement came too late, the passengers should have been informed earlier.
The phone operator told Huang the driver also just received the message from the dispatch center so he couldn’t have broadcast it earlier.
“Besides, one way or another, Mr Huang, you would have to get off the train and wait for another one to reach your destination,” the operator said.
He tried to explain it nicely to Huang, but that only irritated him.
What followed was a temper tantrum gone berserk.
In the following days, Huang began calling a number of Metro stations and wouldn't allow the operator to hang up the phone before he did.
“No one dared to talk to me like that, you are a dead man,” was one of the common phrases in Huang’s lexicon.
“The reason he knew the names of so many station chiefs was not because he is someone special,” a Metro staffer told Shanghai Daily. “He simply asked for their names from the hotline operators.”
Huang's typical conversation with the hotline operator often began with a provocation. But when the operator kindly asked him for his problem, Huang would start dropping names of Metro staff or station chiefs one by one, all of this accompanied with swear words. By the end of the day, people still had no clue what it was that Huang really wanted.
Shanghai Metro said such “complaining” was not only disrespectful to the Metro staff but also a huge waste of social resources.
Audios and videos of Huang talking on the phone went viral on the Internet, and wide media coverage followed.