A few weeks ago a man came into the staff canteen on Paignton Bus Station. He was not happy. You could tell he was not happy by the fact that he was frothing at the mouth and shouting at, or near, the top of his voice that the company was a disgrace and didn't know how to run a prolonged drinking session in a brewery. I have changed the wording slightly here as one or two nuns read this blog. There were a few drivers there and we all agreed with him. Well you tend to agree with some one who is clearly several yards over the edge. ( Yah Tony, you go to war if you want).
Any way he wanted to know who he had to write to to complain so we told him. Complains Dept, The Bus Company, Devon. We assured him the Post Office knew where it was and would deliver his letter no problem. As he calmed down a little I took a chance and asked him what it was that had upset him so much. I was prepared to try and explain if I could the reason for him waiting half an hour for a bus that should have been every 15 mins or explain why he had had to mortgage his house to by a return ticket to Torquay or even that the toilets were closed because they had been used by Class A drugs users and the police had asked us to close the toilets as the could not find the man power to police them.
But it was none of these. What had happened was he had turned up for a bus just as it was pulling away and was upset that even though the driver had seen him waving she had carried on reversing away from the bus stop and refused to pick him up. Now it is a company rule that once a bus has started to reverse the driver may not stop to pick passengers up. See Photo. I would imagine that any bus station in the country where buses reverse away from a bus stop would have the same rule. This is because we don't like having accidents, not because we don't like passengers. O.K. I know that there are some bus drivers out there that don't in fact like passengers and every passenger must know at least one such bus driver just like there are lawyers and estate agents out they that are unloved and unliked by their clients.
In a bus station once a bus has started to reverse it has right of way. All other buses stop until the reversing bus is out of the way. Think what would happen if a bus suddenly stopped and picked up a passenger. The driver waiting would get fed up waiting and drive forward just as the reversing driver decided to move. Crash. Lots of glass in bus windows all over passengers in bus. Not nice.
Well a couple of days ago I saw and other reason for not stopping once you have started reversing. I was on the Bus Station platform waiting to take over a bus after my lunch break when I noticed a bus on the stop had just started to reverse It had gone about a foot when someone waved and the driver went off his head and stopped and opened the doors. Passenger, aware that this was a rare favour hurried up to the bus and in his haste slipped on the wet floor. He hit is shin on the edge, very hard edge, of the platform and his head on the safety bar on the door and ended up lying in his best suit on the damp and dirty floor of the bus.
Remember: There's always an other bus, eventually.
Footnote to this. When I drove in to the Bus Station yesterday I noticed a couple walking in the bus reversing area without a care in the world. Just as they walked behind a bus it's reversing lights went on. It is very difficult to see directly behind a bus from the drivers seat and fearing for these two idiots lives I blew the horn as loud as it would go. The other driver heard me, as did every one within 200 yards. Except for the mad couple who just carried on walking as if they were in the safest place in the world. Which thanks to me they were.
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