Trimess

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Another Day at the Office: Adding Insult to Injury

Baptiser Busted

In an earlier post, I described being assaulted-by-saliva by a boarding passenger who got angry that I told him the amount of the correct fare.

Today, they arrested him. How, you ask? The nitwit boarded my bus - at the same stop where the assault occurred, and at the same time of day no less.

This time he had a transfer with him, and headed to the back of the bus - either not recognizing me, or not caring. I called it in, and arranged to have transit police meet me at a stop ahead. There, after about 3 minutes wait (I told passengers that I was running early and needed to hold for time), police arrived, confirmed with me that this was the guy, removed him from the bus and made an arrest. They called in his ID as they detained him and I overheard what sounded like a lengthy record. I heard the phrase "felony assault" more than once.

My Reward

While most passengers - many of whom were present on the day that I was assaulted - were supportive, two chose to express different emotion at having their bus ride delayed. The first, a man asked why I was harassing a homeless person and delaying the bus. I told him that this man had assaulted me last week and I had to report it to get the guy off the street. The man then angrily said to me "so make an arrest and move on - why hold up the bus?" Apparently this guy thinks that bus drivers are magic cops.

The second - a scowly woman (artists rendition included at the beginning of this post) who regularly rides but never returns my "good morning's", waited as long as she could tolerate apparently. Stomping to the front door, she turned and said "You know what? YOU are responsible for what happened. You DESERVED it. I saw the whole thing and you are responsible because of the way you handled it!" She then stomped off.

At that point, I got on the PA, again apologized for the delay, and invited people to apply to become a bus driver and "live the dream".

I also wished that Adron Hall was there, because despite the delay - I still arrived at my terminal on-time.

-jw

1 comment:

Al M said...

Living the dream baby!
:-)