Do we need to say it? The TTC has a customer service problem. It’s acknowledged as much. It extends from the way operators and toll-takers interact with the public (or not) to management’s reluctance to adopt the Presto farecard that every other municipality in the GTA uses. And don’t get us started on why the TTC still hasn’t implemented the sort of pre-paid farecard system that’s standard to just about every major subway in the world. Perhaps, it needs to start with some baby steps. And in this, the TTC could take some cues from its own past (click the image above to start the slideshow). For example, 1944 – the year the transit commission launched a major customer service initiative. Every morning 23 freshly minted “TTC Guides”, all young ladies, were dispatched from headquarters, fanning out across the city’s outer regions to help funnel travellers into the downtown core. At 2:30, they would reposition themselves at Toronto’s busiest intersections, give directions, sell tickets, and jump on and off streetcars to pleasantly admonish wayward travellers – employing, according to one reporter, a “wifely reprimand” and “a smile that turns away wrath.” They were supplied with lines such as: “There’s a seat at the back of the car, and surely you’d rather sit than stand, wouldn’t you?” “Let’s all move down now and make it easy for others getting on.” “The front door is the proper entrance and the centre door is an illegal ingress. And you wouldn’t want to be unlawful, would you?” The TTC Guides, graduates of a three-week program that included a component on speech and diction, were recognizable for their “newly-designed French gray uniform and wedge hat.” Toronto the cosmopolitan, crowed the Star: “Where else can you get four street car tickets and a slice of glamour for 25 cents.” Maybe not the customer service initiative appropriate to this century. But at least they made the effort?