Bus Drivers, do your job!
The drivers at Arrivia bus services seem to have a different concept of time and morals to the rest of humanity, either that or every one of them is caught in a kind of permeable bubble in the fabric of space, which is about 30 minutes out of sync with the rest of reality. You can set you clock by the conspicuous absence of public transport at the arrival time listed, and powers of the universe help you should you need to get somewhere quickly, on time, or in many cases AT ALL. For crying out loud is it too much to ask for a public transport system that actually leaves its garages, let alone gets to where it’s meant to be without having to resort to carving tallies into the rain shelter to mark the days that have gone by where there has STILL been no bus!
It was raining today. Hurricane Bob had decided that Florida was too crowded, gone on holiday and parked itself right over Whitley Bay. Rain was coming in on a flat trajectory, winds were howling like a banshee and all that was missing was some bloke loading animals into an ark. It was like the end of the bloody world; people were writing their epitaphs on the shelter glass, a guy went past on a sled pulled by huskies and some hairy Norse god with one eye and a spear was looking for a giant wolf. It was so wet and cold that an arctic ocean narwhal would have said “DAMN, that’s wet and cold!� and we were stood in this flimsy, vandalised glass shelter that smelled strongly of cider and urine like the lesser horsemen of the apocalypse, waiting for a bus.
10 minutes passed, and I flicked on my MP3, figuring that if the bus had been held up in traffic I might as well make the best of a bad situation.
20 minutes passed and the guy next to me started doing a sort of jig to try to get some feeling back in his legs.
30 minutes passed, and still no bus.
At 40 minutes overdue another bloke said “I may be gone for some time,� pulled up his hood and vanished into the rain.
At 50 bloody minutes overdue, the bus finally arrived like the chariot of some merciful Valkyrie and it was all that we could do not to jump up and down for joy. Gathering up our frostbitten appendages and shreds of our will to continue living, we trudged onto the bus looking as though we were fresh from the Somme.
I thought it was all over, I thought it was finished, but like some low budget Hollywood creature feature it isn’t over until the credits. Oh no ladies and gents, because I was very naughty. I did the most heinous, sacrilegious act that one can possibly do; and act that earns you a no-questions-asked trip straight to HELL and a bath in molten lead (not that this wouldn’t have been a relief) for the rest of eternity. God help me, I paid the driver with a ten pound note.
Because the price of getting on a bus to go anywhere, provided you can even find one, is now one arm, one leg and one f***ing soul. Even getting four miles to the nearest city you’re looking at six pounds for a day ticket, four pounds for a return and your firstborn child if you pay the return fare separately. This bus driver had been squirreled away in his nice warm staff lounge shovelling fish and chips into his flabby face for nearly an hour when he should have been doing his bloody JOB, and glares at me like I just called him up for the army draft because I refuse to pay his company’s extortionate fares by carrying a burlap sack full of coins around. And when I tell him I don’t have any loose change, he heaves such a massive, world-weary sigh that to hear it you would think he has been asked to replace Atlas in holding up the world, not drive the peasant wagon from A to B. No apologies, no explanation, just a filthy stare, some dark muttering, my change and a lingering odour of chip batter. He proceeds to manhandle his rickety, urine soaked contraption from Seaton Delaval to Blyth via the Moon, making excellent time despite the fact that Ragnarok is happening on the road outside, and offloads his passengers into charver Mecca.
It doesn’t end there. Some poor old lady had been waiting at the stop even longer than we had. She was in her wheelchair, and when she came to board the bus he treated her like she was an exhibit from the moron museum. She had to actually ASK him to shuffle his elephantine backside out of the seat and put the disability access ramp down for her, heaving another earth shattering sigh as he did. It’s all I could do not to stuff my hand down his throat, grab his slimy entrails and choke him to death with them as an example to jobsworths everywhere. Tomorrow I’m mounting a spike rail on my fence, and if a repeat performance is forthcoming there will be skulls for the taking.
Where this new breed of ignorant bus drivers get the rocks to turn up stupendously late in conditions that can kill kids and old people, and then act as though it’s their passengers fault is beyond me. They never apologise even when they’re clearly in the wrong, delay their services for the most outrageous reasons and treat anyone under 30 like a knife wielding thug. I have seen this dozens of times on various services, and whilst the vast, VAST majority are friendly agreeable people, there are an increasing number of drivers with a vendetta against the world at large. Being a bus driver is not a taxing job. You are not going to get post traumatic stress from waiting at the traffic lights or need therapy because you employed all twelve brain cells to be courteous to the people who are giving you your **** job, that you are at the very best negligent with. Yet another case of giving a jobsworth a uniform and a bit of authority, and next thing you know you can hear the click of jackboots in the gangway. Public transport is exactly that; the public pay you to take them places, not to be offensive, belligerent and downright **** rude. DO YOUR JOB.
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
You state that he was driving through ragnarok and are displeased that there is a delay in service? Do you expect that there would NOT be delays in conditions like that? I'm not positive but he's probably commanded by the company do drive slow in such conditions.
Did you expect his "rickety, urine soaked contraption" to somehow have an anti-ragnarok device on it to allow him to travel at the speeds required to meet the schedule?
To top it off you didn't even pay your fare. You knew full well what the fare was yet you failed to have the correct change. You are lucky you got transport at all.
Then you go and do the cowardly thing and make fun of the person's size. As a large fellow myself I call you a coward. It's easy to make fun of a person due to their size. Especially when you can add food to the equation. Did it ever occur to you that he smelled of fish and chips because as a public transportation driver he probably had a measly 15 minutes to wolf down his lunch before he had to get back to his route all the while fighting through ragnarok itself?
I myself am a public transportation servant. I am a cab driver. I myself have had people complain very loudly that they have been "waiting over an hour" for a cab when they called 10 minutes prior to my arrival. I myself have had those customers who didn't have the full fare. I have even been called a racist because I wouldn't cut someone a break on their fare.
The amount of abuse that customers like you heap upon us "servants" is astronomical. The above driver was already fighting weather that you state would make a Narwahl say "It's wet and cold", he was already late on his schedule due to said weather, top it off with a customer like you who feels they don't have to pay the fees as they are posted.
YOU were part of the cause the poor handicapped woman was dealt with poorly. You and everyone else like you that he probably delt with all day long.
If you had called me as a cab driver in such conditions and were foaming at the mouth about the audacity that it took a bit of time to get to you. I would have simply told you that now you are going to have to wait even longer as you call an alternative transportation as I was going to leave you there talking to the Narwahls.
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kumu Honua
Then you go and do the cowardly thing and make fun of the person's size.
Yeah, insulting someone for their size was a low blow, and I take that back. You have me 100% right there and were justified to call me out over it. You could however recognise that it is a RANT, not an enlightened, thought out, morally justifiable debate. Rants aren’t supposed to be reasonable works of philosophy; they’re spleen venting. I couldn’t care less about a person’s weight, but the idea of someone who would put their self-interests before others when they CHOSE a job that revolves around the exact opposite has me at a loss. That’s like a nurse asking you to stitch your own wounds.
Quote:
To top it off you didn't even pay your fare. You knew full well what the fare was yet you failed to have the correct change. You are lucky you got transport at all.
You misread that bit. On the fare, you’re telling me customers should provide their own change now? The fare was six pounds and I paid with a ten pound note, and last time I checked you can’t get coins out of an ATM. So instead I should carry around pockets full of coins to save the driver the trouble of pressing a button four times, which for some reason he felt the need to get angsty, start snapping and being aggressive over. He didn’t even have to do any mental calculations. The guy’s attitude stank like a week dead tuna, and if he had a reason for it then fair enough, but there’s a thing called professional courtesy and his passengers didn’t do anything wrong so there was no need to take it out on them. I doubt you would go berserk if your customers in your cab couldnt hand you the exact right cost of their fair. And no matter what you say or what he was going through, there is ABSOLUTLY NO EXCUSE for behaving the way he did towards the woman in the wheelchair. That was a disgraceful breach of good conduct.
As to the rest of it, my anger is justified. Given that hundreds of people, especially the elderly, rely on bus services as their primary mode of transport, the level of unreliability, something that the Arrivia company is notorious for, can’t be justified in a service that is meant to run on a reliable schedule on a given route. In the rain delays for this service (I use it often) on average of 10 minutes are expected, 20 minutes isn’t unheard of, but 50 minutes late is a **** joke when people with appointments are relying on you. You’re telling me that you wouldn’t be annoyed if your bus just decided not to turn up; weather didn’t seem to slow him down any, the rout he takes doesn’t cross any motorways or junctions and he didn’t have a collision. The only reason I can think that he was late short of being abducted by aliens, is that he let his mood get the better of him.
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
I guess the fare portion was a difference in how it works on your side of the pond and mine. In the US (At least in Arizona) you must have correct change. Including the quarters. The driver does not give change. $1.25 fare. If you have to pay $2 cause you didn't bring quarters that's on you. You are saying however that the driver has change. In that case it's part of his job and you didn't deserve the attitude.
Perhaps the biggest problem was your choice in poeticizing this rant. You made it sound like hell itself had opened up and slammed the city. With that amount of death and destruction unleashed I would be happy that he showed up at all. Let alone 50 minutes late.
The shakespearean wording of the rant caused me to get a bit riled up. Especially the attack on the person's size.
It sucks that the service was late. It sucks that the driver was less than stellar. It sucks that he had a bad attitude. I would however hesitate to apply it to all public transportation. You might end up with a rabid cowdragon biting at your heels.
Perhaps you should contact the company and express your displeasure. Try normal language so that you don't sound self-righteous and maybe that driver will be moved to a different route (demoted) and they will focus on that particular problem route.
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
I like this rant and the way it is written. I had my share of rude bus drivers too. (there are nice ones but like it goes, it only takes one bad one to make you forget all the good ones). One from years ago. I had to take the bus from the subway station to get home. I get out of the subway and I see the bus approaching the bus stop which is at the other side of the road. Nobody is waiting at the bus stop so the driver just drives on, I take a sprint, waving at the driver to make clear I want to go with.
He just drives on, waving back. Insert here some severe swearing.
It was late at night, in a not so safe neighbourhood and following the timetable he should have waited at the bus stop.
I could go on with other stories (including ones about the cab drivers over here) but I won't, I already feel my blood pressure rising.
I sometimes think that it is an attitude which is encouraged among colleagues, a bad corporate culture. If you don't want to "serve" the public don't be a public servant.
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
heh I never caught an Arriva bus, we used to have Arriva trains in Yorkshire though (now Northern instead) and they always seemed ok. ALWAYS late though. I take it you live in the countryside? Sounds much like Yorkshire (having to wait a long time for a bus).
What some people don't realise is just how lucky they are with transport elsewhere. After having moved to near Birmingham (and I hate it, might I add), the buses run every half hour at off times. The busy periods, they run every 5-8 mins. Every service. It's great. On a Sunday I only have to wait, at most, half an hour, and in fact 15 minutes if it's between 10 and 4.30.
Whenever I go back to Yorkshire, I will stay with my parents in Driffield but go for a day to visit my old colleagues in Scarborough; a 20 minute drive down an A road. However, since I have to get a bus, I have to wait 30 minutes to catch one, then take an hour to go through all the little villages. Not complaining about that (I actually appreciate the chance to see some greenery instead of godawful concrete and people) but it is quite scary how much some people have to rely on public transport.
There's no excuse for it to be as shocking punctuality-wise as it is in the UK. When I visited Germany it's amazing how everything is on time! Ok, with buses you have random traffic problems, fair enough, but with trains? If you can't get something to a station on time that can literally only follow a clear track... well there's something wrong.
Most bus drivers down here are rude too. There are a couple really nice ones (I get the bus 5 times a week for work so I kinda know 'em all now hehe), and most of the ones in Yorkshire were always fine too. Seems to be a general thing though; everyone in Yorkshire (at least the 'middle of nowhere' places) is much, much friendlier, as it's more of a close knit community (much like HZ vs WoW ;)). We also operate up there on a 'pay with what you want' policy, so the £10 is acceptable. Travel West Midlands gives no change! If you want to pay with a tenner, feel free, but don't expect to get your change back! I really, really hate this. Particularly as their reasoning is 'wrong change slows you down', which is a good point... but they're still never on time!
Quite frankly the opening rant applies to anyone and everyone. Not just people who deal with customers. Everyone. Rude people seem so prolific these days. As nice as it is, it saddens me when I get complimented by a customer for my customer service. I treat them only as I would expect to be treated, yet it is so few and far between. And conversely, customers themselves need to stop being so rude. So few people thank the bus driver when I get off the bus! Does it really take so much to take out your headphones for 5s and say 'thank you'?
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
You guys don't understand how lucky you are to have decent public transportation. Were I live we have a few city buses, and that's it. They don't even go everywhere, just main routes (largely to and from the university). And our public transportation is better than most of the cities around here! As for "country" transportation, we have inter-provincial buses (which, given the size of our provinces, are like inter-country transportation in the EU), but if it doesn't connect cities it doesn't exist. Towns, villages, hamlets, farms? You're on your own.
So from my point of view you guys whiiiiiiiiiiiine a lot.
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
So if you have something more than nothing you have to consider yourself lucky and you can't complain about the quality? Oh thank you bus driver for being rude because I'm so lucky you are here and want to drive me to there?
Interesting point of view.
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
What happened to me, not so long ago:
I had two wisdom teeth pulled out, a swollen face and pain.
So I ordered a taxi to bring me home.
When the driver heard where to go, he started whining, that he had not waited more than 1h to get a customer, to have only such a short ride (it was not sooo far away from my home, but I could not walk home). He refused to let me in. I told him, that he HAD to do, and then he did, all the way whining, that he looses money with that, giving me names.
I did not argue with him, but when I was able to talk again, I called his
central office, telling them what happened.
I got an apology and a free ride.
I`m not willing to accept rudeness and disrespects towards me and others.
I found out, if you talk to those people: "Why are you talking with me like that/treat me so impolite/ hurt me etc" they back down most of the time, and change behaviour. Most of the time...
*agrees with pevil and Sigi'
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
LOVWYRM
I`m not willing to accept rudeness and disrespects towards me and others.
I found out, if you talk to those people: "Why are you talking with me like that/treat me so impolite/ hurt me etc" they back down most of the time, and change behaviour. Most of the time...
Generally true. I've found that most people (including myself) generally engage in such behaviour not in order to inflict pain on others, but in order to air their grievances (ie, complain). If you tell them to stop, most people will. Unless they're ***hats.
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sigi
So if you have something more than nothing you have to consider yourself lucky and you can't complain about the quality? Oh thank you bus driver for being rude because I'm so lucky you are here and want to drive me to there?
Interesting point of view.
Just saying, people sometimes think they're entitled to the service that is provided for them, but in most places that service probably doesn't exist.
An example: if you ask a dirtpoor poverty stricken American if they'd be willing to wait six months for a hip replacement.... but it would be free, they'd weep at your feet. Waiting 6 months for a hip replacement is better than not getting one at all. If you ask a dirtpoor poverty stricken Canadian that same question, they'll spit in your face and let loose a string of profanities and insults that would make Rush Limbaugh take a step back in shock.
One feels entitled to receive a service, the other doesn't. It's all about perception. The thing to keep in mind is that there is *nothing* that anyone is entitled to. Everything is a privilege, and should be treated as such. That doesn't mean that things shouldn't be made better (if they reasonably can be), or that people shouldn't complain, but it is something that everyone should keep in the back of their minds while they complain.
Always remember: Things Could Be A Lot Worse.
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
could be raining!! ;) :cool:
(sorry, having a mel brook's moment......)
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
Makes my service sound like angels sent from heaven pulling golden chariots...
Honestly though, 50 minutes late is unforgivable, unless the streets are so flooded or packed with snow that the bus honestly cannot move. Late is fine, but entirely unreliable is another thing altogether. x.x
Over here in Canada we're also expected to have exact change, but we also have a lot more coins than our US cousins. ( teehee, silly dollar bills )
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
Yep, agree that of course some of us are far more priviliged than others, no doubt about it. But... well manners cost nothing. It's the one thing that everyone should be able to get. Lateness, while unpleasant, can be dealt with and excused. Rudeness never has an excuse.
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pevil2000
Yep, agree that of course some of us are far more priviliged than others, no doubt about it. But... well manners cost nothing. It's the one thing that everyone should be able to get. Lateness, while unpleasant, can be dealt with and excused. Rudeness never has an excuse.
Was thinking about the same thing but couldn't find the words, I totally agree
Re: Bus Drivers, do your job!
Bus service usually runs late. In fact being late is actually a good thing because if it was early you'd have no chance of ever catching a bus. Raining of course makes it even more late.
There's a big difference in the way public transportation works in the UK compared to North America. Profit! So Arriva is going to be putting as few buses as they can to service the route so they can maximize their profit. The driver may have been rude but think about how you would be if you were driving a bus in such weather, were running behind schedule and the passengers were being rude too. On top of that consider that he likely has an inspector on the radio reminding him he's behind schedule making his day even more enjoyable.
