Driver Is Bus-ted

(Our town provides a school bus for children from the northern part of town, as walking to school would take us more than half an hour each way due to the altitude difference between the north and south part and a forest area between the two parts of town. It is Friday, after school, as we’re approaching the last stop. None of the children have done any damage to the bus or dirtied it an any abnormal way. It is snowing, so some road salt and muddy snow might have been dredged in but that’s to be expected.)

Bus Driver: *stops the bus in the woods, a few hundred meters before the last stop and gets out a garbage bag, paper towels, and a spray cleaner* “No one gets out before this bus is clean.”

(We first think he is joking but he isn’t. The bus isn’t going anywhere.)

Bus Driver: “The bus won’t clean itself. GET TO IT!”

(We are pretty intimidated by the driver, and start to scrub the seats and floor with the paper towels and empty the little trash cans into the garbage bag, all the while he is ranting about “useless little brats who make everything go to s***” with expletives I’d rather not translate. He finally drives the last few hundreds meters and lets us out after inspecting our work. I am about half an hour late and quite shaken, so my mom immediately asks what’s going on. My dad gave a friendly call to the bus company:)

Dad: “I would like to inquire if this was a new company-sanctioned policy and if my daughter should bring rubber gloves next time she takes the bus.”

(Unsurprisingly, this never happened again and next time we saw the driver, he was very subdued and just muttered “getting their way no matter what” under his breath.)