For me, it was an excuse for an extra coffee as I flipped through my morning emails.
For her, it sounded like a job-threatening disaster. We were both on an empty platform waiting for a train that was never coming.
My would-be fellow passenger was not happy. She made that pretty clear to ScotRail staff, telling them, oh-so-robustly, how much trouble she was in from her boss. Their response? They rang up her office to explain the delay, the second of its kind this week.
That is the thing about Scotland’s train company: it is never so good as when it is bad. Sure, things go wrong with the trains. And the consequence for that can be serious: missed connections, lost meetings and raw stress.
But as ScotRail celebrates a new passenger survey showing it has recovered its old levels of satisfaction it is worth bearing in mind that passengers accept some inconvenience on the rails. They also expect grace under pressure from staff. Mostly, I think, they get this.
I should make a declaration of interest. I am a commuter, one of the hardcore, the two per cent of Scots who get on a train nearly every day. My line, which crosses both Glasgow and Edinburgh, has more delays than most.
It also has nicer trains, almost all with working wifi, toilets and and new power sockets. I am, by and large, a happy customer. For now. Last autumn, my mood, like that of many other commuters, was not so positive.
The reason ScotRail, or rather the ScotRail Alliance (which combines the privately-run train-operating company itself and the state-owned infrastructure giant Network Rail), is bigging up its satisfaction rating of 90 per cent is that things did not look so good last year.
Back then some of its trains were out getting those fancy sockets and wifi systems installed. The entire system was still recovering from an exhausting work-around forced on it by the closure of the upper level of Queen Street station. Cue some sore delays - above and beyond those caused by inevitable vandalism.
Mandatory performance indicators, like punctuality, fell from their normal heights. ScotRail routinely outperforms most UK operators.
Passengers revolted. One woman on my train was particularly cross about “skipping” - the practice of missing out a station to keep the train on time. That passenger was Jackie Baillie, the Labour MSP. Insiders confirm her niggling at officials had an impact, a classic example of effective opposition politics.
So too did pressure from Transport Minister Humza Yousaf. He was watching complaints in real time about crowding and delays on Twitter. He was not slow, I’m told, to feed that back to managers.
True, some at ScotRail felt they had been dragged in to the sometimes brutal politics of post-referendum Scotland.
But trains run to their own timetable, not one of nationalism, or unionism. In fact, ScotRail’s rolling performance measures have been getting better ever since it began a new one on December 11. Soon I might not get so many extra coffees of a Monday morning.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here