A recent announcement from the London Underground (LU) that it was to hire 300 new staff as station assistants has sparked a frenzy with 30,000 applicants looking to secure the jobs.
Despite the anticipation that the jobs would be popular, LU, it appears, was not ready for the barrage of applications it received, the volume of which actually caused the website to crash.
The sudden need to take on extra staff has been labelled as a blunder by union leaders after 800 station staff were relieved of their duties last year with some saying the realisation of a lack of staff before the Olympics is the reasoning.
An LU spokesman said: "It is absolutely wrong, factually wrong, to say that we have made a mistake."
Howard Collins, LU chief operating officer, added: "We will be looking for people with proven customer service experience and there will be both part-time and full-time jobs available."
The underground network is set to get plenty of use in 2012 with a number of high profile public events set to take place.