Props to the Stagecoach bus drivers this week. They are both dudes and hardcore. Early this week going home my bus driver got the route wrong which caused Panic! On The Bus! and people getting out of their seats to let the bus driver know we were going the wrong way. He had started to take a different route that still went to Newmarket but which skips out Parnell. He realised straight away but this didn’t stop a couple of people weaving down the aisle while we were moving to queue at the front of the bus to tell him.
It could have ended there once he told us all we would rejoin up with the correct route as soon as possible. But once everyone had sat down one lady, in her early thirties I’d say, stayed standing next to the driver clinging to a pole and staring at the rest of the bus. Initially I thought she was just eager to get off at the first available stop but no. Instead she wound into the bus driver, starting by speaking her mind and getting steadily louder, shriller and more emotional with a strong Russian accent. It seemed that she was upset we had gone the wrong way and what time this was costing her (all of 10 minutes, lady).
But it didn’t stop, I don’t know if she had just had a bad day but she got more and more angry and the bus driver started defending himself, explaining he was doing all he could to get us back to her stop. This just aggravated her more, she started swearing: “You f*****g b***h! You b***h! Do you know how much this is costing me? You should think before you do such things…..you know? Do you know?….f*****g b***h” At this point the rest of the bus were staring at her in silence going Er, what the hell?
She went on, right in the bus driver’s face as he was driving, she yelled at him about cost and I think things along the lines of making him pay her back her back for the money she was going to lose and the bus driver saying the bus drivers union or something would pay her back. Eventually she got at him so much that we stopped in the middle of a backroad so she could get off.
So that bus driver was a dude. Thursday’s bus driver was hardcore though. Months before he got the bus stuck in the narrow streets behind Parnell shops trying a shortcut to get around some fire engines. He’s a pretty gung ho Arab guy and tends to operate his bus a little independently of the rules. On Thursday his bus arrives and we are queuing up to pay to get on board when he gestures to me saying “Get on board, get on board now” so I step up and he pulls the lever to close the doors.
There are still people wanting to get on the bus, the Asian chick behind me puts her foot in front of one of the closing doors while she tries to get money out of wallet. Gung Ho bus driver says to us inside the bus “I am going now, they, they can catch the Link”, the Link being a bus that comes every 15 minutes. Which is not a great plan dude, some of those people may have needed to catch this bus specifically. It is unusual for a bus driver to leave before letting everyone on board when his bus is only half full.
He starts to move the bus slowly forward to the consternation of the Asian chick with her foot in the door. I’m looking at her foot and then back at the bus driver then back at her foot. She takes her foot out just in time and goes ballistic at the bus which is fair enough. Gung Ho bus driver proceeds to let those of us who got on pay for our ride all the while tooting away and absolutely flooring the gas pedal. Hardcore.
March 17th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Reading your first story I kinda thought, gee, shouldn’t someone intervene? But then, I suppose that would only make it worse. Tough one. Letting her off was probably the best plan.
Bus drivers are ass-kicking, though. We had one fulla recently, it may have been on a night-rider bus, who took The Bell very seriously. We’re driving along, someone dings The Bell, so he stops at the next bus stop. No one moves. “Anyone getting off?” he asks. No one speaks. The bus driver gets up and stands at the head of the bus. “Is anybody getting off?” he bellows with something approaching a Russian slur. No one moves. He then stands there for about 5 seconds glaring at us. I, for one, stared at my feet. I didn’t want to make eye contact and give the mistaken impression I had in any way been involved The Great Bell Deceit Of Saturday Night. My comrades did the same. The driver slowly sat down and we resumed the journey. I was fucking careful to not ring the bell until I was sure my stop was next.
March 20th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
This morning my bus crashed into a car. Like, blown out the windows, blood, car through a fence, tears, panic kinda level. The bus driver very politely said “sorry folks” and went to survey the damage. I had to walk to work.