They told me my life would change
drastically once I started driving a bus full time. They weren't
kidding.
If I'm not working then I'm sleeping,
waking up, eating and heading back to work. Two days on one route,
the next a different one, then back to the original one, and for my
Friday (on a Monday) a split shift on two more routes. My mind has to
reboot each day I get behind the wheel. Some routes are similar
enough to where I have to force myself to remember which turn to make
out of the transit center. By the time my first day off arrives, I'm
truly droopy and ready for some serious pillow time.
It's taken me this long to acclimate to
this twisted schedule enough to be somewhat coherent writing about
it. I've been telling myself that I needed more material for a blog
entry, that I refuse to write just to write,
but that's a lame excuse. This is just another way of hiding my
literary laziness. Sadly, it's not as if I have throngs of fans
hanging on every word. I promised to chronicle my travels, and for
the past several weeks I haven't kept up my end. Save for my
self-indulgent mourning of Linda's lost voice, I've been slacking. So
let's just see what you think of the following jewels (pun intended,
as I hope you will soon realize).
Recently I earned
my one year anniversary bling, which I proudly wear on my sweater
collar. While I steadily refuse to wear a name tag, I earned
this pin. It has been a hard year. There is so much to learn about
ferrying Portlanders around in a 20-ton vehicle few truly realize. It
is a major commitment and incredibly stressful. Lars Larson once said
we're “overpaid” for what we do, but the dunce has no idea what
the job entails. Prior to taking this job, I didn't think it would be
too hard either. Hey, all we have to do is drive a bus, right? Pretty
easy! Hell, I done drove a big rig 'afer, no big deal. Well the
difference is, driving a a semi is easier because the cargo doesn't
talk back, stab, bite, punch, or spit on you. All Lars has to do is
flap his lips and breathe sounds into a microphone. His arguments on
this subject lack merit and are clearly not based on facts. He can
use his bully pulpit without fear of immediate and/or violent
feedback. He can simply hang up on a caller who disagrees with him or
is abusive. When I am operating a bus, my audience is just behind a
yellow line a foot away from the driver's seat. They are truly a live
audience, Lars, and they can be fire-breathing and very unforgiving.
There are many
inconsistencies in the transit profession. Customers expect us to be
on schedule. Our agency expects us to drive safely. These conflicting
expectations create potentially dangerous bedfellows. If we drive
“the schedule”, safety can slide. If we drive safely as we are
trained, our schedule can suffer. If our schedule slips, we lose our
“recovery”, or break time, at the end of a run. This leads to
further fatigue, because you lose the chance to walk around a few
minutes and stretch. Sitting in a bus driver's seat for hours at a
stretch is grueling, especially if you didn't get a break on the
previous trip.
You know how it
feels when you take a long road trip and you've been in the seat so
long you can barely walk when you stop for gas? Imagine driving your
car about 350 miles a day. Then think of what it would be like if you
stopped every mile to let someone in or out. Not only would you be on
the road about 12 hours, but you'd also be pretty ornery toward the
end of it. I drive a bus an average of 105 miles every day. One of my
runs is about 27 miles one way, and I do one round trip and a half.
The last leg is a “deadhead”, in which I am driving empty for
another 30 miles. So the way I figure it, my 100 miles driving a bus
is easily equal to simply driving a car 500 miles every day.
Another
statistic which easily boggles the average mind is how we are
expected to be perfect.
One day I counted 92 intersections with traffic lights in one
direction on my longest route. A good estimate of how many times I
actually stop the bus and start again is about 750. Today I counted
320 people riding on my shift. This is anything but easy, Lars. It is
damn stressful. On this route I am expected to be perfect in timing
the traffic lights, all 275 or so of them. In one week, on average, I
will traverse roughly 1,250 intersections. Each of these requires me
not to run a stale green, yellow or (God forbid) “pink” light. If
I do run even just two red lights in a certain period of time, I can
lose my job. Do the math: 1,250x4x12=60,000 per year, right? So if I
run two reds out of 60,000, it's buh-bye driver! Even one in just
30,000 means I'm sweating for a couple of years until my slate is
clean again. I don't know about you, but to me those are extremely
daunting odds to beat for “all the money” I get paid. Makes me
almost as nervous as Lars would be facing a panel of intellectuals on
the Bill Maher Show.
Then
there are the 3% of riders who are truly challenging, and the 2% who
are downright dangerous and/or stupid. In training, we were told that
90% or more of all arguments begin at the fare box, and it is true.
The other day I was politely asking a rider to please have his fare
ready, as a sign on each bus clearly states, when he boards. It saves
time, which is valuable to a driver. This rider took offense to my
request, and began berating me and his fellow passengers who were
trying to calm him down. I politely suggested (as the steam rose from
the back of my collar) he stop arguing, asking for common courtesy.
His tirade continued; he used language overly punctuated with a very
versatile but boorishly common four-letter word. I finally decided
this passenger had nothing of value to add to my normally mellow
ride. He was clearly a distraction. So I pulled over at the next stop
and suggested he have his fare ready to show the next driver. He
left, with an extended middle finger as a parting gift. (Oh how I
wish a certain bus fan was running close to his
digit!)
Also figuring
prominently in the Three Percent Club is the guy who insisted I let
him de-board in the middle of an intersection. He wanted to catch a
connecting bus. I was in the left-turn lane, preparing to turn onto a
very busy street. This guy thought I was an “asshole” because I
wouldn't risk his life or my job by letting him dash across three
lanes of traffic, against the light. Then there are those fools who
race toward my bus, in the traffic lane, waving their arms as if that
means anything other than they were cheated out of a properly-wired
cerebral left hemisphere. When this happens, a bus driver is on
high-alert and in super pissed-off mode. He or she is likely to
violently wave you out of the road, and then pass you right by. Our
logic is that if you're crazy enough to run toward a moving 20-ton
vehicle, you're too stupid to ride in it.
A few weeks ago, a
young man boarded my bus wearing little more than a g-string and a
halter top. I'm not against fashion experiments are or letting some
skin show. However, I do insist that your butt crack and
family jewels are not part of the display. This feller thought it was
imperative to show it all off, even though the bus was full of
children who had to walk past him as they got on. I asked him if he
had more clothing, so he donned a metal belt with trinkets on chains,
which did nothing to hide his hind-side or jewel packet. Upon more
coaxing, he finally admitted he had a pair of shorts, which I
insisted he wear immediately. The mental picture of his frolicking
have haunted my dreams and still cause me to shudder. Ugh.
More to come.
Please stay tuned!
From the Driver's Side
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