Bus-ted

(I’m waiting at a bus stop on a weekend evening. This particular stop is only used by this one bus line out of all bus agencies in the city, as evidenced by the lack of any other bus signs anywhere in the vicinity. At this time of night, the bus only comes once an hour, so I’m waiting for it pretty vigilantly, looking down the street every few seconds as well as tracking it on my phone. I’m standing on the edge of the sidewalk right next to the bus sign. Finally, I spot the bus. Its route is to make a turn from a perpendicular street onto the one where I’m waiting, and it proceeds to get stuck at the intersection for a really long time. I get bored and look back down at my phone. A few minutes later, I see the bus approaching me out of my side vision. I am still standing right at the edge of the sidewalk, and there’s no way for me to move any closer, so I don’t do anything and wait for it to stop. The bus comes up very slowly, so close to the sidewalk that it passes within inches of me, to all appearances as if it’s intending to stop, and then… keeps going. I look up at it in alarm. It moves on slowly but very determinedly until it’s nearly completely past me and the bus stop. Then, when I keep staring after it and start to move towards it, the bus – clearly reluctantly – abruptly skids to a stop. I quickly go after it, and when the door opens I step in. The driver is a very young woman, in her early 20s at the latest, if not her late teens. She is smugly smirking at me, seeming very satisfied with what she just did.)

Driver: “Hee-hee-hee. You were looking at your phone! And you almost missed your bus! Hee-hee-hee. You were looking at your phone! Whatcha looking at your phone for? You almost missed the bus! Hee-hee-hee-hee. Your phone! You were looking at it! You nearly missed the bus! Hurr-hurr-hurr…”

(She went on and on in the same vein, very stupidly grinning at me, clearly just barely holding herself back from loudly guffawing at how hilarious she thought it was. I stared at her, speechless, appalled that she could think it funny to do this to anyone, much less to another young woman who’d then be left stranded for a full hour in the dark in the middle of winter. I paid my fare without a word and found a seat. I noted her driver ID, and the next day I called the bus line’s customer service to report her behavior. Neither I, nor the person I spoke with, found this incident the least bit funny.)