Ask the driver; we're the original google.

This crack whore gets on my bus and she's all pissy because she's lost her pipe. I kindly tell her to stop whining and to take a seat. A few stops later, I see the woman standing up at the back of the bus with her fists raised threatening to kill another one of my passengers. I not so kindly tell her to calm down or I'll kick her off. "Shut the fuck up cunt, you can't do anything to me!" she replies. "Sit down and be quiet NOW or I will call the police!" I retort.

She sits down grumbling. I notice she's still threatening people so at the next stop I say "Ma'am, this is your stop". "Oh, is it? Thanks, I didn't realize that" she replies in a cheerful voice. As she gets to the back of the bus she asks me "Which way do I need to go? Right or left?" "Ummm right" I reply. After she got off, a guy asks me if I knew where she was going. "Not a frickin' clue" I respond.

Then the whole bus started laughing hysterically.

Go ahead, get angry. Kick a bus. I hope you break a toe.

I was just pulling away from the station when some guy comes running up to the bus, banging on the front doors, begging to be let on. Normally my rule is that once I've pulled away, I'm gone. Once you let one person on outside of the stop, everyone gets it in their heads that they can just flag the bus down anywhere they want. Since I was still in the station and I wasn't holding up traffic by stopping again, I decided to stop and let him on. Well that is once I made it past the insulator. I gestured "one minute" and kept the bus rolling until I passed the insulator two feet ahead. Just as I was coming to a stop, the guy decides to give me the finger and viciously kick my bus. I come to a stop, open the doors and say "I was actually letting you know I was going to stop for you in one second. I just had to get past the insulator so I wouldn't get stuck. Since you seem to have a violent temper and took it out on my bus, I've reconsidered and you can wait in the rain for half an hour for the next bus. Have a nice night"!

I'm such a bitch eh?

And I thought I'd seen it all

I started driving buses back in the beginning of 2005. Four companies later, I thought that I'd experienced all of the weirdest, strangest, nastiest things that could ever happen to a bus driver and that I was bound to start repeating them. Turns out that's not the case. I know that I have strange luck and odd things happen to me that generally don't happen to others. Which is why I was shocked when an incident happened at work that I wasn't prepared for.

Two guys decide to jaywalk in front of my bus just as the lights turn green. I hit the horn and the one guy skedadles to the other side of the intersection while the other guy stops motionless in front of my bus. At first I was thinking it was deer in the headlights syndrome. Nope. He stared wide eyed for a few seconds before he leaned into my windshield and started licking it. Not one lick, not two, he was an all or nothing kind of guy. He licked my windshield until the light turned red. What's the average time you have at a traffic light? Let me google that. Never mind, I don't know. All I could find was the time from an amber light to a red. But anyhow, it's probably 30 - 45 seconds. So this guy spent the better part of a minute licking the windshield of a transit bus.

I really hope he gets mono. I don't know if that's possible but I'm sure he'll contract some sort of deadly virus. Do you even know how dirty buses are?? Even after they've been washed, I wouldn't lick one. And this is coming from someone who licked a slug.

Wheel blocks make great kindling.

A few weeks back, I parked my bus and blocked the wheels. A few minutes later, the bus in front of me moves so I hop in the seat and proceed to pull the bus forward. Oh, yeah, I forgot about the wheel block. I ran it over and it splintered into a million pieces. And it happened in front of about 20 people waiting to board my bus. Would you get on a bus with a driver who forgot about their wheel block and ran it over? Yeah, me neither. I guess that's why most of the crowd laughed and decided to walk instead.

Maybe my supervisor was right...maybe I am a vampire....

Yesterday was my first afternoon shift in about two years. I'll just sum it up now for you guys. ARGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!! HOLY FUCKIN' SHIT HELL BALLS!!!! If that didn't do it for ya, feel free to read on.

To start off Tuesday was the day that all, and when I say all, I mean all of the bus routes going through downtown were changed. I had about twenty minutes before I picked up my bus and I noticed that there were a lot of passengers waiting at the old stop. Being the nice person that I am, I walked over and kindly informed them of the buses' reroute. (Insert verbal abuse here). To make matters worse I had to explain that this only happens Monday to Friday and on the weekends, the buses all go back to their regular route. We're going to get a lot of angry passengers in the next few weeks.

I pick up my bus and my first turn is onto the street that was up until yesterday a pedestrian corridor. Oh and did I mention that I'm a vampire and I usually only work after the sun has gone down???
So let's add it up so far.

1.TRAFFIC
2. Angry passengers that don't know where the fuck the buses are now going
3. The harsh glare of the sun
4. Bus drivers that don't know where any of the routes are going...including myself and my own route. Go ahead ask a question, I can almost guarantee I'll give you the wrong answer...and not on purpose this time!
5. Instead of drunk, stupid idiots. I now have angry, stupid idiots!
6. TRAFFIC

So anyhow, driving down the pedestrian street is kind of an obstacle course. I was doing about 10kms with my hand on the horn the entire time. I'm sure people will get used to it eventually but at the time people just wandered out onto the street without even looking to see if a fifteen ton bus was headed their way. Then of course they looked shocked when I honked at them. "What the fuck? You just caused me to spill my overpriced latte from Starbucks! Just run me over next time!"

Okay, I understand that most people have just finished the work day and they're stressed and angry but seriously the bus driver is not the person to rant to. Here's a tip. Go to a fuckin' bar, have a drink, rant to the bartender, simmer down and then get on the bus. As strange as it may seem to people, our job can be pretty stressful. You may think you're the only one complaining to us about traffic or your job or your lost promotion or the fact that your Maserati broke down (oh boo hoo!), in reality, you're not. Most likely you're the tenth person in the last five minutes. Most drivers can deal with all this but I'm not sure that I can. I want my drunks that hit on me, my bums that are just on the way to cash their pay cheques and consequently can't pay, and the meth users that are shaking so bad they can't speak.

Okay, deep breath! I can deal with this, I just need to get used to a new demographic. This is why I have this blog, so I can rant and not have a mental break down.

So I'm driving along a four lane street downtown. The left lane is backed up with people trying to get onto the bridge while the right lane is completely free. I'm cruising along the right lane when the light turns yellow and I floor it to get across the intersection. Two cars up in the left lane is a ford f150. Now this isn't a huge truck, but for some reason he's driving about a foot over the line completely blocking me. I assume he had just changed lanes and didn't have time to move all the way over. No big deal, except for the fact that the last half of my bus are blocking the intersection and I'm being honked at and fingered by pedestrians. I give him a little honk to let him know that I'm behind him so he can move over when he gets the chance to pull up. No such luck. The douche bag drove like that for a block and a half. My passengers were so angry with me (for being behind schedule) that they kept telling me to get out of the bus and tell him to move his truck over.

Fact: If a driver gets out of their seat and ANYTHING happens, I'm liable and could be sued.

So I just kept honking and gesturing for him to move over. He finally did right before I turned the corner. Yeah!

On my next run a bus had broken down in a bus stop. Because it was rush hour there were quite a few extra buses on the road. There were three parked behind the broken down bus leaving a spot just about big enough for me to park in. Oh but in order to do that, I had to block in a shuttle (short bus) driver. I saw that they didn't have their indicator on so I pulled in front of them and blocked them in. I figured it was better than blocking the entire street. I get out of my bus to see when the guy in front is leaving when I hear some lady yelling at me. I look back and see the shuttle driver reaming me out for blocking her in. "Wha the fuck, you think y'all doing? You think you is better than me cuz you drive tha big ass bus? You want me to come over there and kick you skinny ass?" She yelled. "Sorry, but you didn't have your turn signal on and it was better to block you than to block the entire street." I replied. "You judging me cuz I'm black. Fuckin' cunt. I's going to report your ass to tha copny!" At that point I just laughed and walked away. I did the right thing in that situation, I don't need to be reamed out by one of my own coworkers.

My last run of the day, I was looking forward to it. This woman gets on the bus with a bottle of wine and strikes up a conversation with me.

Woman: I'm celebrating!
Me: Oh, well congratulations. What are you celebrating?
Woman: I'm celebrating the demise of my husband!
Me: Ummm errrr...
Woman: I'm not really celebrating. I'm devastated. Don't mind me if I start crying.
Me: Awkward silence....

This was only the first day of four months before I can change routes. Oh God, I miss my night work.