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Eddie the 15-year-old intern takes over Southern Rail Twitter, saves the whole company

The UK's most hated train company is suddenly making friends

Eddie the 15-year-old intern takes over Southern Rail Twitter, saves the whole company
12 July 2017

There are a number of jobs I would not like to have, or do, even for a week. They include but are not limited to: window cleaner on a skyscraper, crime scene investigator, one of those vets that has to put their whole arm up a cow’s bum, prime minister, podiatrist, and whoever has to clean the long-drop after Glastonbury. But I think, taking all bad jobs into account, the worst one would be to work in customer services at Southern Rail.

As we all know, Southern Rail is the worst of the train operators, and anybody that has ever stepped foot on one of their trains will 100% have experienced a delay at some point in time. I have worked in the complaints department of a call centre before (never again, oh god never again) and so I understand how draining it is to be attacked and pelted with vitriol all day, but I could not fathom the sheer amount of hate that must be directed to those poor souls at Southern Rail.

But they pulled an ace out of their sleeve yesterday, by letting Eddie, the 15-year-old work experience boy, take over their Twitter.

And he bossed it, big time.

Particularly once the #askeddie hashtag appeared, and he started getting chucked an insurmountable deluge of questions that had nothing to do with trains (bit of a godsend for Yung Eddie). But he handled the requests like a pro:

Of course, with Eddie being an unpaid intern, some requests were above his station:

But apart from that (and the fact that I bet he hasn’t ever seen a Chuck Norris movie), I reckon he did a stand-up job. He even had to deal with answering the single most tired question on the whole internet at least twice: would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized zzzzzzzzzzz.

Either way, he’s back today, supposedly. Pity poor Amy, who has to deal not with the usual train-related complaints, but instead with a constant stream of tweets asking where Eddie is.

Of course, and not to ruin everyone's fun, but there's always the chance it's all a big lie:

But fingers crossed, for Southern Rail's sake, that it's not. All that goodwill, straight on the fire.

(Image: Rex)