OPPRESSION

I had a conversation yesterday with one of my gal pals from Trimet.
She described for me the torture that she had to face during her 10 hour shift at Trimet.

It's never been fun for her, she has been employed quite  a few years now at Trimet.
She has received numerous honors and I always viewed her as the "perfect" bus driver.
Professional in every aspect of that job, incredibly safe, incredibly patient, and  incredibly dedicated to doing right for her passengers.


Yesterday she had to deal with one of Trimet's more numerous failures, the broken head sign that gets stuck in the wrong destination.


So here is this poor woman, struggling to do a good job, but the job becomes impossible due to managements malfeasance in the area of maintenance. Malfeasance that would get anybody fired in a private sector position that actually had to report on bottom line performance.


But Trimet executives , being the text book case of bad management, have  no accountability  for their actions and the effect it has on other people.


It's bad enough that west side drivers have to endure hours of calling stops due to this malfeasance because the executives would rather take pictures for their "feel good" blog  HOW WE ROLL, then equip the buses with the proper equipment to do the necessary call stops.


Hell, they are "employees" and they do what we tell them. We'd rather take nice pictures of nice people in downtown Portland for our propaganda campaign then equip those west side drivers with decent equipment.


So all day yesterday, 10 grueling hours, she was forced to scream out what bus she was. It didn't matter that she was parked in the right stop, she had the wrong head sign, so the public of course couldn't figure it out. The burden to make sure the people was placed on the drivers shoulder.


AGAIN.


This is the kind of oppression that I gladly escaped. 
The kind of oppression that comes from a management that does not respect its drivers or its riders.


The executive persona is all that counts at TriMet. 


If you don't believe me, travel to Australia and have a chat with former executive Fred Hansen (pulling down $15.7k/mo) in his new role as a "guru" to the Australians.