Double-Decker Disaster
After a very long and busy day dealing with crazy customers, I’m achy and tired, and just want to get home. I head to the bus station and board the bus, and it’s fairly busy.
Amongst the passengers are a few screaming kids with an annoying children’s show playing loudly on their tablets. Their parents are shouting at them, which is not helping.
Then, about ten minutes into the journey, we are on the dual carriageway when… BANG! The bus starts hissing! We’ve got a puncture.
The bus comes to a stop on a bridge going over a minor road, and the driver radios for help. Meanwhile, some of the other passengers are stressing, the screaming kids are in full meltdown, and no one knows what’s going on.
The driver goes to check the tyres, and yep, it’s a puncture. Luckily, the next bus is only fifteen minutes away, and it will stop to pick us all up. The driver asks everyone on the top deck to come down and stay toward the front of the bus, as we are on a 70mph dual carriageway with fast-moving traffic whizzing by. As we are on a bridge, there isn’t anywhere for the passengers to really go.
As the driver is trying to tell this to everyone, other passengers keep interrupting him to ask him the very things he is saying. An old man asks about five times if the next bus is going to [Town], someone else wants to know why the next bus isn’t here NOW, the screaming kids are being shouted at by their parents, which is REALLY not helping – and then we get this woman:
Woman: “We need to get off this bus now. If a lorry hits us, we don’t stand a chance. Everybody, please, get off the bus at once. A lorry is going to hit us!”
She’s not a [Bus Company] employee and has no official capacity to give instructions, but begins bossing everyone around in a panicked voice.
Driver: “There isn’t anywhere to go, as we’re on a bridge. There’s no embankment for anyone to wait on. The police are on their way to close the lane further back to minimise the risk of an impact.
The woman is still flapping around, panicking. The driver is still being mobbed. Then he sees me. I’m one of the few calmer passengers – I’d listened to what he said, and because I knew the bus timetables (very regular user), I knew the next bus was only a few minutes away. He seems almost relieved that I’m not asking him stupid question after stupid question.
The next bus arrives on schedule, and everyone gets on. The screaming kids go downstairs, so I go up to the top deck… where I encounter the drunken women at the back of the bus “singing” various nineties songs.
Loudly.
And continuously.
Other passengers are getting annoyed.
Another Passenger: “Shut up!”
Drunk Woman: “F*** off!”
She then starts “singing” even louder, like a pack of hyenas.
When we got to my stop, despite my aches and pains, I nearly ran off the bus and up the hill to my house. Another day of dealing with crazy customers tomorrow will seem like a rest after this!
