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.
Originally Posted by Kumu Honua
). 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!
