There are special places in hell for a few select professions, and as far as I’m concerned, bus drivers make the cut. According to Dante Aligheri, there are nine concentric circles of hell, and according to me, the place for transportation workers so jaded with the world that they relish the agonized suffering of other human beings is straight at the bottom. This special class includes taxi and truck drivers as well, but bus drivers are distinct. The daily grind of interacting with people who don’t know where the fuck they’re going, paired with dealing with the brokest of the broke as they clearly have chosen the bus because it is the cheapest form of transportation. That’s gotta be it.
Gazi Baba…Forty Thieves?
So you drive an outdated vehicle spewing black clouds of smog down roads that haven’t been redone in decades, and your customers are people who spent more on the flask of cheap liquor that they are conspiring to smuggle on board than the ticket that actually feeds your family. This actually sounds like a good defense of the bus driving profession.
It’s not. I don’t care what station you are in life, there is absolutely no excuse for a lack of common courtesy. You may be homeless and expect the world to owe you something for your bad luck of having a shit existence. You may be fabulously wealthy and expect the world to owe you something because you “create jobs”. Put that shit away. When another person approaches you courteously with a question or in need of help, you better lend them a hand. If not, I hope you have a heart attack on the spot and they’re holding defibrilator paddles because somebody’s gonna get really fucking gracious in a second.
This might have been way too late to start out….notice the fishermen.
The reason that bus drivers suck balls is because a bus is the least civilized form of tranportation, and they hold the key to the relief of all of humanity’s real needs. On trains and on airplanes, you are welcomed by individuals tasked with your comfort, food and facilities are provided, and heck, you might even catch some shuteye.
Furthermore, there are a finite number of available spots. While trains are occasionally packed (except for India where it’s the norm), buses are consistently impacted to the gills with less-than-fully-bathed individuals. That means luggage is on your lap, so say goodbye to moving your neck or breathing for the next six hours unless garlic breath is the fragrance of the gods.
Human beings have real needs, which we generally manage quite well, unless these needs are entrusted to another individual. And once again this is why bus drivers suck balls. They have a keen lack of consideration for these needs, when they have been willingly granted this responsibility through the very act of paying money to ride in their hell-missile-mobile of fuckery.
He knows he can stop on a dime if he has to pee, or to smoke, or to eat, or to carpet bomb a country ditch with excrement. But he gives negative fucks should you experience these needs, and beyond that refuses to make regular stops to that end. Or inform you about when or where any of these stops should happen. Or mention that none of the stops’ bathrooms have toilet seats. That makes it tough when dookie monsters show up to the picnic. At least with some advanced warning, a girl could have prepared a bit better.
You know somethings wrong when locals start getting pissed, just like when flight attendants get nervous. I was on such a bus once. It was a hot, humid day, as always. It never manages to be rainy when I need to take the bus. Although on second thought, I imagine that careening over slick roads in a metal box driven by some bastard on a schedule is probably not the best idea either. Who knows how much of the “new tire budget” goes to this dude’s cigarette habit.
We had been on the road for hours without a bathroom break, and somehow the local guys were pounding beers like fish and not even sweating it. Maybe they were peeing into their empty bottles. Meanwhile I was a nervous wreck. I had felt bloated for hours, wanting nothing more than to sit on a toilet and see what would come out. Every little tingly situation in my nether regions caused worry that I would leak some urine, and all this worry just made me want to throw up.
But the lady next to me was visibly irate. Her young son was getting restless in the heat, and she was fanning herself too. I didn’t understand a word she was saying, but given my aforementioned prejudices and the fact that she was gesticulating towards the front, my educated guess at the translation was, “What the fuck is up with the driver, fellow weary travelers?”
Clearly this kid was about to regulate
This woman, with her surly voice which once must have been crisp as a youth and now dulled by the tobacco smoke she regularly inhaled, was my savior. If she had started a church on the spot, I would have ecstatically sworn my devotion to the holy cult of St. That-Lady.
At some point, and probably due to the fact that her son was starting to piss everyone off with his crying, she started to drum up support. This must have been how the bread riots that touched off the French Revolution started. A grizzled old woman with a hungry son starts lobbing insults at officials and gradually the mob rallies behind her. “Yea, you know what? She’s right!!!” And chaos ensues.
And then she turns him loose.
Gradually this lady started growling in a way which could only be inciting violence, railing against the gendarmerie: in this case, our hapless bus driver. Within seconds all the womenfolk realized that they were tired, huddled, and starving masses desperately seeking freedom. With a little back and forth (and some laughter from the others, meaning that my new patron saint was really sticking it to him), I felt the bus start to falter in its hell-bent dash to our destination. A couple of irritated gazes into the rearview mirror which quickly morphed into stares of sheer, panicked terror and I soon heard the crunch of gravel as we pulled off the main road at the next available stop in the middle of nowhere–and it had a bathroom.
Lesson learned: Buses are hell. Bring survival gear, meaning plastic bags, a SMALL bottle of water, wet wipes, and a snack. And when you need help, make friends with the locals!
–Lianne (21), Sydney, rubbing sweaty elbows on a bus in Southeastern Europe