Petty Stooge Idiot

I need to start taking an earlier bus in the morning. My current bus driver is an antagonistic jerk-ass.

Nearly every day he does something to piss me off, but it’s so petty I can’t call the bus company about it because they’ll tell me to piss up a rope. Every morning we all stand waiting at the bus stop sign at the beginning of the block, and even though the stop is at the beginning of the block, he just blows right past everyone and stops near the end of the block. Granted it’s only like 200 feet, but then everyone has to rush to the door so he won’t drive away without us. All along the route to the freeway he drives right past people waiting at bus stops who have to frantically flag him down, and then he slams on the breaks and people have to go running after him.

It was just this morning that I realized that it wasn’t just me being irritable at the crack of dawn. He nearly missed a stop (again) where a lone commuter was standing at the sign for the bus stop with his brief case in hand at the end of a residential street. When the bus came to a quick halt, the commuter boarded, and the bus driver had the nerve to say, “Man, you need to make an effort.” To which the ticked-off rider replied, “I did, I walked four blocks to get to the stop.”

Since when do commuters need to do some secret dance to get a bus to stop other than standing at the goddam bus stop?? And when did bus drivers start trying to instigate argument with downtown commuters?! Usually it’s the other way around: drunks, bums, and rowdy teens picking fights with drivers and other passengers, so I can’t imagine what kind of nightmare it would be to ride the bus through cracktown at 11pm with this idiot behind the wheel—no wonder he’s on the commuter route.

Someone needs to tell this a-hole that he’s wasting his energy trying to “train” his passengers to respond in any particular way to his approaching bus. He needs to just drive the damn bus and stop at every corner that is populated by motionless humans. He also needs to hear from his supervisor that most of the downtown-bound commuters ride the bus because their employers flip most, or all, of the bill for the outrageous monthly express fare, which has resulted in the highest ridership in twenty years. He should be made aware that if he keeps up the crappy attitude and his little power plays ridership will fall, freeway congestion will increase, and he could be laid off.