Your Boss Literally Threw You Under The Bus

I work for a bus charter company. The problem is that my boss is a total cheapskate. This is one of the stories where he treats people like dirt instead of spending money.

One of the buses develops a problem: after driving a certain number of miles, it loses its gear. It has an automatic transmission, so this is obviously internal. There’s nothing we can do about it except take it to a transmission shop. And since it’s not really drivable, it should have be towed.

Not to my boss.

He grabs the backup bus and has me follow him in my car up to the disabled bus. The existing driver takes the backup bus, transfers the passengers, and leaves, leaving the “broken” bus and us behind, and my own car on the side of the highway. Highway patrol already came by and asked us to call a tow… or they’d call one for us.

So, my boss jumps into the bus and tries to start it. It won’t start. Nothing from the starter.

I climb under the bus. It looks like the ground wire has come loose from the starter, so there’s an incomplete circuit. But a starter in a bus is like 100 pounds, I kid you not. I don’t have the tools to remove it, redo the ground wire, and put it back. The connector has snapped off, so it’s not a matter of just screwing it back in, either.

My boss gives me an order.

Boss: “Just hold the connector to the ground stud until I get the bus started.”

Okay, fine.

It’s getting dark, and we’re next to a highway where big rigs drive by at speed limit and wind is whipping me every few seconds.

He gets the bus started. I get out, slap my dust off, get into my car, and follow him off the freeway.

But he doesn’t stop. He goes through the underpass, gets back on the highway, and starts heading back home.

I call him.

Me: “What’s going on?

Boss: “I’m going to drive it home.”

Me: “But the transmission is acting funny.”

Boss: “As long as it moves, it’ll be fine.”

Keep in mind we’re about two and a half hours from the home base — 120 to 150 miles.

As predicted, after about twenty-five or thirty miles, the transmission conks out. And the only way to fix this is to turn the power off, thus resetting the transmission computer… which means I have to climb under the bus and do the restart procedure again.

And again.

And again.

And it’s getting worse, enough that my boss is forced to take LOCAL roads instead of the highway, as these highways are not that wide.

What should have taken two and a half hours took us five hours, instead. And my car was a total mess because I had climbed in and out and rolled on the ground so many times that both I and my car were filthy.

It turned out that the bus needed to be towed ANYWAY, because our mechanic said it had to be done at his shop… which was an hour away… back the way we had come from.

We could have saved a TON of time and I would have been a lot cleaner if my boss weren’t such a cheapskate.