(I’m sitting near the back of an almost empty bus. The only other passengers are a teenage couple sitting near the middle of the bus. An elderly passenger approaches.)

Elderly Passenger: “I’d like to sit here.”

Teen #1: “Pardon?”

Elderly Passenger: “I would like to sit here. I’m old, so you have to move.”

Teen #1: “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

(The elderly passenger starts shouting.)

Elderly Passenger: “How dare you? You young yobs shouldn’t even be on the bus; you’ve got healthy legs! And now you won’t give up your seat for someone who needs it more!”

Teen #2: “Sorry, are you blind as well as rude? The bus is empty. There are plenty of seats much closer to the front than this one, and you have no right to ask us to move. And secondly, we paid just the same as you did. We have just as much right to be on here as you do.”

(The elderly man goes to say something, but seems to reconsider and takes a seat closer to the back of the bus.)

(I enter the bus with my kitten in a carrier on the way to the vet.)

Me: “Excuse me, I’ve never been to the vet with this bus. Can you tell me which bus stop is nearest?”

Driver: “You need to go to the vet?”

Me: “Yes.”

Driver: “Okay…”

(After a while, I notice in passing that he missed the bus stop where I needed to get out.)

Me: “Excuse me, I think you missed my stop.”

Driver: “No, I didn’t.”

(I decide to trust him and a few minutes later, he stops the bus, nowhere near a bus stop.)

Driver: “This is your stop.”


Me: “Okay?”

(I’m a bit confused until the driver points to the other side of the road.)

Driver: “That’s the vet. Hope your cat is okay!”

(I am a habitual rider of the local transit system that covers DC metro and northern VA. I board the bus to see a rider verbally assaulting the bus driver.)

Rider: “I don’t care about your timeline route. You were supposed to go to [street] to drop me off 45 minutes ago. That last driver missed my stop and your operator assured me I would be home on this bus by 6:25!”

Driver: “Ma’am, I cannot directly deviate from my route until I’m closer to your stop. To deviate now would be to leave any other potential riders along the route stranded in the cold. I am truly sorry that you are having a bad evening due to a coworker, and I’ll do what I can.”

Rider: “Do what you can?! Do I look like the normal low-element that ride this bus? I am an educated woman with a job working for the federal government. Do look like I’m another one of your lowlife un-educated passengers?”

Driver: “Ma’am, I am a faithful man, and I know that God doesn’t give you us more than we can handle. For every negative that happens, he provides a positive. It is my prayer that when you get home tonight that you have a pleasant evening.”

(This quiets her down considerably after that. Before I got off I handed him a note I wrote him with a $10 bill in it that read…)

“Sir.

Yours is one of the hardest jobs in the county. It good to know that you are a man of faith, and you’re right about God balancing the books, but until then here’s a down payment on some fortune for you.”

(I have a bunch of friends over for a concert, and we all stay at the same place in South County Dublin, about twenty minutes from the city centre. It is almost midnight by the time we get to the bus stop. Dublin Bus provides a free shuttle service to the concert, but by that time all the free shuttle buses are gone. Just then, an out-of-service bus arrives.)

Bus Driver: “Hm, there’s a lot of you left here. Tell you what: we’ll just pretend I’m a shuttle.”

(My friends and I and a couple of strangers get on thanking him. On the way to the city centre, I need more information.)

Me: “Sorry, when’s the next Nightlink?

Bus Driver: “That just left; the next one is at 02:00 h. You might have to get a cab.”

(I try to call Enquiries for a cab company, but can’t because my phone is out of battery. My friends are all from abroad and therefore don’t have Irish Enquiry numbers on their phones. The bus driver overhears our increasingly worried conversation and gives me his phone. At this stage we’re almost at Trinity College, where the shuttle terminates.)

Me: “Thanks, are you going on to Donnybrook Garage?”

Bus Driver: “Yeah, don’t worry. You can stay on.”

(I try to get a cab, but am told by the cab company that they can’t send out a seven-seater to the bus garage but we should just flag one down—pretty much an impossibility.)

Me: *to my friends* “S***, we’ll have to flag one down… or two, rather.”

(At this stage, the only people left on the bus are me, my friends, and one guy on the backbench. We’re all getting seriously worried about getting home.)

Bus Driver: “Right, so where are you all going?”

Me: “Deansgrange!”

Guy On The Back Bench: “Dun Laoghaire!”

(Both these suburbs are off the same main road, about three miles apart.)

Bus Driver: “Shag it, I’ll drop you all home!”

(The driver dropped us, and presumably the guy from Dun Laoghaire, all the way to our respective street corners, thus staying on about half an hour after his shift ended and going out of his way about 10 miles there and back. All we had to repay him for his awesomeness was one of our homemade message board badges commemorating the concert meet-up and half a Duty-Free bag of gummi bears, and he accepted them with a smile. That’s why I love this country.)

(I am a teenage passenger on a public bus and there is an older gentleman talking so loudly on his cell phone that he’s drowning out my music player. I talk to the driver, who’s clearly just as annoyed by the man as the rest of us are.)

Me: “He’s being really loud. Is there anything you can do about it?”

Driver: “I would, but I’ve already been written up twice this week because rude customers complained about me telling them off; one more and I lose my job. I can’t take the chance.”

Me: “Okay, no problem…”

(I go over and stand in front of the rude passenger who’s still on his phone.)

Rude Passenger: *to his phone* “…KIDS ARE SO RUDE THESE DAYS! THEY HAVE NO RESPECT FOR THEIR ELDERS!”

Me: “Excuse me, sir.”

(He ignores me and keeps talking. I decide enough is enough, and snatch the phone from him and turn it off before handing it back to him.)

Me: “First off, it’s rude to ignore someone when they address you. Second, it’s really disrespectful to be so loud in a public space; I couldn’t even hear my music over your griping. Maybe you wouldn’t have so much to complain about if you set a better example.”

(He was quiet the entire rest of the trip, and the driver gave me a free all-day pass!)