Campfyre Stories

I spent most of the weekend getting ready for my trip to Washington DC.  Trying to get the house kicked into shape, getting the laundry together so that I can pack, setting up the new computer and all kinds of assorted housework.

I think, in the past couple of nights, I’ve totaled some 10-12 hours of sleep.

I overslept this morning and wound up RUNNING to the bus stop, shouting "Wait!  Wait for me!" and barely making the  bus.  I found out that my regular driver in on vacation, so we have the crappy driver who is rude, almost always running late and insists on certain rules that don’t actually exist outside of his head.  Of course, he couldn’t be on shift during the week I’m gone, it has to be the week where I have so much other stuff to do that this just makes it all that much more annoying.

I’m coming to realize that no matter what I’ve got planned, if I’m going out of town, there’s always a trial that I have to go through before I leave.  At least I do get to leave…  and it makes being away from my regular routine that much more pleasant.

But I still have a ton of things I *have* to do, a bunch of things I’d like to do before I go and very little time to do it all…  I also still need to find a way to fit sleep into the equation.  I’m not really sure how any of that is going to happen, but I’ll do the best I can…

So there I was, minding my own business, shutting out the rest of the world, trying to get to my tattoo appointment.  There was this punkish/emoish kid sitting next to me and a mother and child in front of me.  A cyclist got on the bus and, you know, he *looked* like a normal guy, but it turned out he was a zealot.

He was handing out pamphlets to people who would make eye contact and trying to give them something that was fitting to each person.  To the mom he gave a pamphlet titled, "What Is A Mother?"  To the guy next to me it was one that said "I’ll Do It Tomorrow".

After the punkmo guy finished reading the pamphlet, the zealot started talking to him about finding God and coming (back?) into the fold.  He handed him a business card with a URL (CallHim) and tried to keep talking.  I thought the kid was receptive to the guy and turned my music up.

The punkmo kid put the card and the pamphlet very deliberately into his backpack and pulled out an old, gilt-edged book.  Being nosy and meddlesome, I tried to get a look at what he was reading, but all I could see was a chapter title of "HELL" and what looked like verses inside.  I figured that this was some kind of relligious book and that the zealot had somehow convinced the kid to pray or something.

He kept reading until the zealot got off the bus, at which point he pulled his backpack out and closed his book.  It was at this point that I was able to see the title, which caused me to "HA!" (and, unless you’ve actually witnessed it, you really don’t know just how loud that particular exclamation is coming from me, especially when it’s completely unexpected.)

He gave me a huge grin and a slight wink as he put away Dante’s The Inferno.

If you don’t like the job that you have, you should find a different one.  I mean it.  I’m not talking about a job that you don’t particularly like, I mean the job that you hate so much that, while you do it grudgingly, you take out your anger on the people you are supposed to be helping.

What happened yesterday shocked me and even conveying the story when I called to lodge a complaint, I was astounded by the enormity of the situation.  There have been very few times that I can think of where I have felt that someone should be REMOVED from their job, but this was certainly one of them.

I got to the bus stop and waited for about 20 minutes for a bus to come.  There was a broken-down bus at the stop, and I was pretty sure that, had it been working, it would have been my bus.  I wasn’t in a hurry, though, so I didn’t mind waiting.

Finally a bus came and there was a large group of us waiting.  I stepped onto the bus and the driver SCREAMED at me.  The gist of it was "GET OFF THE BUS!"  So I got off the bus, not really understanding why he had screamed…  it wasn’t like I knew he wasn’t running, or even that I had actually done anything wrong.  In fact, prior to attempting to board, the whole group of us were waiting on the sidewalk, so he could have easily said something earlier.

The regular driver went over and spoke with this guy and told him that his bus had broken down, so he’d need to take the group of us who had been waiting.  Clearly, the guy was pissed off, but he took a couple of drags off his cigarette and allowed us to board.

I shrugged it off.  I still feel that this was completely uncalled for, but a single instance, to me, does not necessarily make for a complaint-worthy situation.  But there was more…

This driver kept screaming at people, for no apparent reason.  When passengers needed assistance, he would slam things around and huff and puff.  He was tailgating cars in front of us, weaving in and out of traffic, slamming on his brakes and missing bus stops (both for picking up and for dropping off).  Never before have I felt UNSAFE while riding public transportation, but I certainly did then.

It got to a point where he just plain stopped picking people up unless he had a drop-off at that stop.  He would cruise past bus stops with anywhere from 2-8 people waiting and just not even be concerned with them.  At one point he stopped the bus, got off, screamed at the people waiting to "Don’t move!  Stay where you are!", walked to the back of the bus, got back on, closed the doors and drove off without picking up any one of the 6 people waiting.  Shortly after that, a kid got off the bus (half a block away from the actual bus stop when the bus finally came to a full stop) and took his bike off the rack on the front of the bus.  He wasn’t yet on the sidewalk with his bike when the driver pulled away, nearly clipping the kid.

I was astounded.  This driver was a menace and completely out of control.  I called the bus company as soon as I got home, giving them a full description of his inappropriate behavior, the bus number and a physical description of the man himself.  I also made a point to mention that I have not seen this driver before and that he does not usually drive this route, as well as to say that I have never experienced anything even coming close to this level of inappropriate behavior from any of their drivers.

I’m pretty sure that this guy is a sub, who only actually takes routes when there is a significant delay.  This means that most of his days are spent sitting around, not driving, not doing anything…  maybe reading a book.  I’m sorry, but if you’re unwilling to do your job when it needs to be done, you should be doing something else.  It must be nice to get paid to *not* drive a bus, but you’re not being paid to not drive, you’re being paid to cover when needed.

And good grief, I don’t want this guy to be on the road.  I really hope that I’m not the only person who called to lodge a complaint, because this guy should not be allowed to treat customers so poorly and to create a dangerous situation in rush hour traffic.

No, not blogging.

Ok, well, also blogging, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about today.

I was on the bus home yesterday.  It was packed and loud.  So loud, in fact, that I couldn’t listen to music because I could hear every other MP3 player, person on their cell phone and conversation on the bus, so I kind of eavesdropped and kind of zoned out.

In front of me was a guy who I have seen on the bus several times.  I have known this guy at least 6 times in my life at different times…  do you know what I mean?  Sometimes you meet the same person over and over again, but it’s never actually the same person?  I can’t describe it better than that.  He’s almost always a little younger than me, except when he’s not, and then he’s significantly older.

Anyway.  So here’s this guy talking to pretty much anyone who would listen.  He’s got drama and baggage and conflict and inner turmoil and doesn’t know how to resolve his situation.

I’ve been there.  He’s 25 years old.  His girlfriend is 20.  He still loves her, but he’s not in love with her anymore.  He wants to cut her loose, but she’s reckless and stupid and 20 and if they break up, she’ll fall back into her old, destructive ways.  "I just want to help her get to a place in her life where she’s stable…"  and then dump her.  Oh yeah, that EVER works.

And, from what I’ve seen and experienced, this is pretty typical of what happens when you’re 25.  You realize a lot of what you don’t want and you start figuring out where you want to go in life and what changes you need to make in order to be more happy, or more complete, or something.  And it sucks.  Oh boy does it suck.

So here’s the poor guy who is completely entrenched in his quarter-life crisis and he’s talking it out with random people on the bus.  "You guys have good advice," he says.  And I’m thinking in the front of my head, well, it’s cheaper than therapy, but in the back of my head I’m wondering what gets you to that point.  I mean, ok, I’ve been on both sides of the random stranger intimate conversation and there’s something very liberating about being able to vent or confide in someone you’re unlikely to ever see again.  That said, he was seeking out multiple people and really seemed to need to talk this stuff out.  I couldn’t help but wonder if his girlfriend and her whole dramatic situation left him somewhat isolated from the rest of the world.

But I digress.

I listened to this guy talk about his baggage and I listened to the random strangers offer their advice and anecdotes.  I didn’t feel that I had much to say to his stuff…  I mean, I’ve been there and I know what he’s going through, but I also know that telling him things he already knows isn’t going to help.

"But how do you do that?  I mean, how do you tell someone that you’re not IN LOVE with them anymore?"

"Well, you leave the love part out of it and only talk about the actual issues you’re having, you tell her why you’re not in love with her, but you don’t have to tell her THAT you’re not in love with her."

"But how do you say that?  Especially when you know you’re going to hurt someone you care about."

And then I HAD to say something.  "Speaking as a woman, you just say it.  You don’t cushion it, you don’t spin it, you don’t stretch it out, you don’t lie about it.  You just say it.  It might hurt, but it’s a lot easier for a clean wound to heal."

This went on.  I kind of listened.  I kind of dozed.  I was periodically distracted by those who make riding the bus an unpleasant experience.  My ride is an hour and this guy talked to his new-found confidantes for at least half of that time, probably a little more, until they got off the bus.

And I thought about it for a long time…  and I remembered being 25 and going through all of that "Who am I?"  "How am I defined by the people around me?"  "I keep trying to save people from themselves, is this working?"  And there’s a fundamental truth that a lot of us learn during that time, at least if we’re lucky, because it’s something you have to learn eventually.  I felt imposing just offering this random statement to this guy I don’t know this time around, but have known before.  So I scripted it out in my head, worked up the nerve and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hey, man, can I tell you something that you’re gonna figure out soon anyway?"

"Please."

"The bottom line is that you can’t take care of anyone else unless you take care of yourself first and foremost.  It’s not a selfish thing to do.  It’s actually more selfish to not take care of yourself in an attempt to take care of someone else because then you’re both left wanting."

"I think that part of me knows that.  I’m trying to take care of myself.  I just care so much about her and I want to make sure that she’s ok, and taken care of."

"Clearly it’s not working.  You’re so conflicted over the entire situation that you’re talking to random strangers on the bus.  You know there’s a problem and you’re so wrapped up in how to take care of her that you’re not taking care of yourself."

"You’re right.  I would just hate to see her go back to her old ways of sleeping around and partying all the time…  wasting all her money on weed and booze and sleeping on people’s couches."

"Yeah, I know, and it sucks, especially when you care.  But you have to give her the freedom to make her own mistakes and to fuck up her own life, man.  You can’t fix her.  You can’t save her.  You can’t change her and, really, all you’re doing is taking a toll on YOUR emotional well-being.  All I’m saying is, and you’re gonna figure this one out soon anyway, you can’t take care of other people unless you take care of yourself first."

And he thanked me and got off the bus to meet up with his girlfriend. 

I don’t know what, if anything, he really got out of any of his conversations or any of the proffered advice, solicited or unsolicited, but he seemed satisfied and it really is cheaper than therapy.  For myself, though, I think I’ll stick to  blogging.

…said the man behind me on the bus.

But it’s not.  Not really.  I mean, sure, technology is prevalent in our lives nowadays and certainly, it’s a higher technology than, say, the technology in a VCR or an answering machine, but that doesn’t make it actually high technology.  In fact, high technology is now and has always been inaccessible to the everyman.  You have to work with military contracts or medical research or something similar to even be aware of a lot of the HIGH technology that’s out there.

MP3 players, digital cameras, DVD players, flash drives, personal computers, etc., etc.  This is not high tech, not by a long shot.  This is medium tech, it’s not cutting edge, but it’s not quite "primitive" either, and everyone has access to it.  You might be able to make the case that something like Blu-Ray is the highest tech of storage media or that gaming technologies can be considered hi-tech, but I can’t imagine that you’d successfully be able to argue that something that available isn’t already being surpassed by another technology that few are even aware of.  This is the stuff of science fiction, kids, and it’s coming soon to a box store near you.

The context of the guy’s statement (which wasn’t made to me, I just happened to overhear) was that computers are everywhere.  That you can’t do much of anything without having to work with technology on some level, and I understand the point that he was making, but I can’t reconcile this idea that technology that has become commonplace and that, really, hasn’t changed all that drastically in this decade is still considered "hi-tech".  I mean, is this the type of guy whose VCR clock is STILL flashing at 12:00 because he can’t figure out how to program it?  On some level, it wouldn’t surprise me.

I don’t know…  the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that hi-tech can’t actually exist in our real lives, or not for long.  I’ve been brooding on this and trying to come up with a workable definition, but it’s all just so subjective.  Surely components to things that are no longer hi-tech may be invented or revamped in hi-tech ways, but does that make the overall product as hi-tech as the component?  I suppose that may be true for some people, but without major changes, I don’t think it works.  The whole auto-park feature on cars is pretty hi-tech, but that doesn’t make the actually car all that hi-tech unless it’s decked out, even then, you’d be hard-pressed to convince me that not having to parallel park makes your car, as a whole, hi-tech.

The further we progress, technologically, the more difficult (for me, anyway) the standards for a definition of "hi-tech" actually become.  I mean, cutting-edge needs to be a factor for sure, but what about older inventions that have only just found their niche in the mainstream?  What to think about technologies that are unarguably something "new and different" but just don’t work right?  What is an innovative leap great enough to render the previous version of whatever all but obsolete?

It seems to me that new terminology is needed to sum up technology.  I mean, sure, a pen and paper are unarguable LOW technology, but does that mean that a standard $3 calculator is, by default, hi-tech, simply because it is higher than some wood pulped/carved/molded into a workable shape?  I think not.

But the bottom line, for me, is that I don’t think that it matters how old you are or what you’ve done for a living.  Unless you’re spending your days gaping stupidly at things like automatic doors, digital watches and the ridiculous number of channels available on cable, you’ve got at least some perspective on the issue.

Surrounded by technology?  Absolutely, we are.  Does that necessarily make the technology HIGH?  Not really.  Once it becomes a part of the daily lives of most people, once it becomes easily attainable, it loses it’s cutting-edge value.

Monday was fine except that I was wiped out.  Had Spawn had any more time with me than what he already had, it would have been a fight.

Tuesday I was reminded exactly why I don’t tend to like people until they pass the age of 25 and go through the whole self-identity crisis.  Let me just say, anecdotal evidence is not a valid debate point, and frankly, I wasn’t talking to you when you determined that, whether or not children are losing their childhood at an earlier age, that’s not a bad thing, since you had it harder than anyone else in the rest of the world, and you turned out fine.

Yeah, ok, whatever gets you through the day.  Also?  Taking up an entire row of seats between two people just makes you self-absorbed.  Also?  I don’t care who you are, applauding and laughing at a rape scene makes you a bad person.  Fuck you all (except the one person whose company I seek out, you know who you are) and I want those two hours of my life back.

Wednesday had hardly even started when it went down the toilet.  A portion of the main road had flooded, so the bus decided to turn around, retrace the route for over a mile, take weird back roads that I’m not familiar with and lose 15 minutes in order to get about a block and a half around the closed portion of the MAIN FUCKING DRAG.  Which would have been more than enough to make this particular Wednesday a Wednesday, but no.  The bus also had to smell like funky garlic and the good bus driver in on vacation, so we’re stuck with this complete ASSHOLE who insists upon making us walk even further than the quarter mile we already have to walk.  So we hit the last stop (which we call the last stop because in order to get into my work site, you need to have an official badge) and there are 4 of us on the bus, 2 of whom I recognize (one of whom is me, who I do not need to recognize).

We get to the gate, and the security guy comes on and the 4th person is this old lady who doesn’t work there and, therefore, doesn’t have a badge.  So the bus driver starts flipping out and YELLING at her about how she should know better!  Wait…  No…  It’s the BUS DRIVER’S job to make sure his passengers know what’s going on with the route, not some old lady who is in town after having been gone for 15 years.

At this point, the bus driver, who is yelling at the little old lady (with all her luggage!) tells her that she needs to get off the bus and walk in the rain the mile or more back to the bus stop.  Now it seems to me that the non-asshole thing to do would be to have her get off the bus, stay there at the gate and offer to pick her back up when you left…  maybe it’s just because I’m not an asshole, but why make the little old lady (with luggage!) WALK over a mile when she doesn’t even really know where the hell she is?  It was the security guard who told the asshole bus driver to stop yelling at the lady and just make sure she didn’t get off the bus on site.

That got me into work a half hour late, which is fine, since I don’t actually have any plans today, at least not ones that are dependent on time, but it means staying late and still walking in the rain, only probably colder rain, and blah blah blah blah…  I really don’t need this many Wednesdays in a week.

I overslept by a half hour, which meant I missed the bus.  It also meant that I had to walk the two miles into work, which isn’t usually a problem, unless, you know, it’s 0 (that’s Z-E-R-O) degrees out, with a wind chill of -15.  Oh yeah, fun times.  Add to that the fact that the city, in its infinite wisdom determined that the *best* place to dump the plowed snow is ON THE SIDEWALK.  And then didn’t shovel or plow or blow or whatever the bridge…  or the sidewalk.

So I’m walking in…  and it’s cold out, but I’m dressed properly and I have all the accessories - hat, scarf, gloves, (headphones) - when some guy shouts to me in a scolding way, "Where.  Are.  Your.  Gloves?"  And I look down at the pale pink gloves that I’m wearing and hold up my hands to the guy.  "They’re pink," I said, not really having anything else to reply.  "Good girl," he said.

And it occurred to me that I see people every day who simply do not know how to dress for the cold.  A refusal to wear a hat, or forgetting their gloves at home or not owning scarf or eschewing layers as "too much work".  These people would be SCREWED if their car broke down on the way home or if any circumstances arose where they needed to be outside.  And it’s bigger even than simple ignorance, it’s really about a greater reliance on cars than I had really realized until now.

Even the people I know who KNOW how to dress for the cold usually don’t.  They save it until they’re going skiing or hunting or (what is wrong with these people???) winter camping.  Unless they are specifically in the wilderness or the country, they do not apply their knowledge of how to dress for cold weather, relying instead on their warm car and insufficient jacket.  And that’s all well and good, I suppose, until you consider that it’s always possible that you’ll run out of gas or something will go wonky in your engine or you’ll find yourself in a car accident.  And, my friends, at that point, in -15 degree weather, it would not take long for hypothermia to set in.

The reality here is that we ALL know how cold it is outside because we ALL have to go out in it to some extent.  You don’t look cool or tough for not wearing a hat or gloves with your fall-appropriate motorcycle jacket, you look like a cold IDIOT.  And, honestly, many of us wonder about your sanity.  You don’t look sexy showing off your midriff with your short top and your low-rise pants, you look like a cold IDIOT who’s attempting to be sexy, but, honey, I gotta tell you, frostbite isn’t sexy…  it’s gross.

I can forgive not wearing a scarf because, as Spawn explained to me, "It feels like being strangled."  I have the same problem with turtlenecks, so, ok, just bundle and layer up.  Lack of scarf is forgivable and it’s generally not covering skin anyway, just helping to insulate at the neck, but HATS, people, and GLOVES.  Even that brief 5 or 10 minutes a day of exposure can turn into more and you know it’s going to be unexpectedly.  Depending on the weather, that 5 or 10 minutes of exposure can be enough, especially if you don’t know how to act, react and dress in cold weather.

Clearly, far too many people DON’T.

But kudos to the ones who do.  Probably you’ll live through the winter. 

… and I was in a pretty good mood.  Woke up on time with an idea for a blog post that I was kind of starting to write in my head.  Got dressed, went to wait for the bus and I waited…

And waited…

And waited…

And waited…

And 20 minutes late, a bus finally shows up, but it’s not the regular bus, nor the regular driver.  If I miss my regular route then I have to walk 2 miles, which takes about a half hour, so I ask "Do you go into [my worksite]?"  He says no, but I notice that there are a bunch of the regulars on the bus, so I get on, grab a seat and call the bus company.

I explain that I had been waiting for a very long time, where I was waiting and ask what my options are, or if, through no fault of my own, I’m going to wind up being later than I already am.  They tell me that I should find out if the bus driver’s name is Charlie [last name] because he’s not usually working that route and is only filling in for today.  If it *is* Charlie, then he will be taking me all the way into work.

So I wait for the bus to empty out a little, then go and ask him "Is your name Charlie [last name]?"  Which totally freaked him out a little and he explained that, yes, he didn’t know it, but he does go into [my worksite].  Of course, at this point, we’re already a half-hour late, but at least I won’t be an additional half-hour late to work.

We get into Schenectady and a bus company supervisor pulls the bus over to find out "is there anyone on the bus going to [my worksite]?"  Well, yeah…  *I* am, so he says he’ll take me in, in his official bus company pickup truck.  So I get in the truck and he took me all the way to the door (instead of my having to walk the last 1/4-ish mile over.

And I forgot about the good idea for the blog post I had.  But maybe I should just put this instead…

So there I was, minding my own business, waiting for the bus. When he came, he told us he was running a little late - about 2 minutes.

He took off like a bat out of hell and passed by my sunglassed friend, who waved his arms as the bus cruised by. A few miles down the road, he caught up with the bus, explaining that he had gotten a ride.

About 3 stops later, the bus erupted into chaos as two women started screaming "YOU NEED TO PUT HER OFF THE BUS! SHE *HIT* ME! THREE FUCKING TIMES!" (We all, at this point, took our headphones off so we could hear better.) A third woman stood up, leaned over another passenger and started screaming, "WATCH YOUR MOUTH! THERE ARE CHILDREN ON THE BUS! THEY DON’T NEED TO HEAR THAT KIND OF LANGUAGE!"

Apparently, a woman wearing a backpack, who was standing, had been pushed by the movement of the bus into the woman sitting by her. The sitting woman was less upset by the backpack than the fact that the backpack woman hadn’t apologized or acknowledged that she had been knocking her.

The screaming went on for a minute or two when a man went to the front of the bus and tried to make peace. "Ladies, we want this bus to start moving. We all want to go home. Miss, please sit down. Let’s see if we can resolve this like adults." At which point the woman in the backpack started in on how it wasn’t her fault. "Lady, just SHUT. UP," said our peacemaker. Of course, at this point, it all started again, only this time there was an additional yell of "I’m going to be late for work!!" and when as the woman started yelling about how the kids didn’t need to hear that kind of language, they all started crying.

It was at this point that the driver got involved. Pulled the bus over and threatened to call the police or to put the foul-mouthed woman (who actually wasn’t directly involved at all) off the bus herself, or possibly the woman screaming about how we had to think of the children. "I have to report this to my supervisor, " he said and the whole bus groaned.

Thankfully, that didn’t take long and soon we were on the road again. The backpack woman got off a few stops later and people started putting their headphones back on and talking amongst themselves.  We thought it was over, but wait, there’s more.

A guy rang the bell for the stop and went to the back door.  While we were stopped at a red light, at an intersection before the bus stop, he started pushing on the door, which wouldn’t open, it only let off that infernal buzzing noise.  "Hey, man, open the door!  Back door!  Let me off!  I want to get off!"  The driver replied that the door would open when we actually got to the bus stop.  I guess the dude in the back didn’t hear him, because when we pulled over to the bus stop, he went to the front to get off.

"Yo, man, I wanted to get off.  You gotta open that back door."  The driver replied, "I can’t let you off in an intersection when I’m stopped at a red light.  You have to wait for the actual bus stop."  Guy:  "That’s fucked up, man…" and then he said something that I couldn’t hear.  But apparently the driver heard him because he JUMPED out of his seat and chased the guy out the door yelling "What did you say!?  What did you say to me???"

I was so glad that I was already planning to get off that bus early.  As my stop approached, I went up to my sunglassed buddy and said, "Heh.  Bet you’re glad you were able to catch the bus you missed, eh?"  He said, "You know, this is why I hate riding the bus," and shook his head. 

I shrugged.  "I guess, but you’ve got to admit, it makes a pretty good story."

It’s all about perspective.

It’s only been one morning and already I miss my regular bus driver.

He’s a great guy, who sometimes puts on a crotchety attitude to get us all to work/school on time.

"Come on, come ON, let’s go, move it, move it, move it!"  He hurries people on and hurries people off because if he doesn’t, we’ll all be late, including him for when he changes from one route to another.

But he took the week off because the drivers are only allowed to take full weeks, not partial…  so we have a substitute…  and not the one I was hoping for.  This guy doesn’t seem to understand the discipline the passengers (on our route, specifically) require in order for him to run on time.

So he’d sit at a bus stop while the little old lady dug through the change in her purse trying to find a quarter…  and he’d wait around to…  I don’t know…  see if anyone else was coming?  And the end result of it was that we were TWENTY MINUTES LATE.  Which is unheard of for this route.

Even worse is that he is supposed to start a different route a full 5 minutes before my regular bus driver usually drops me off.  So he was actually 25 minutes late in moving to his other route.

Give me a hard-ass driver any day.  One who isn’t afraid to tell people to move faster when they’re slowing everything down.  One who will tell the people with the Nextel walkie-talkies to turn off that function on their bus.  One who will clearly explain that full-sized strollers (and similarly bulky items) need to be folded up and out of the way and if they’re not willing to NOT take up the aisle, they can get off and wait for another bus.

From experience, I can tell you, all those people who you’re catering to and think you’re making a good impression on?  Those are the ones who will take full advantage of you to the detriment of *everyone else*.  your regulars?  We’re the ones who crack up when you hurry people along or make them behave like civilized people.  We’re the ones who will applaud when you throw the beligerent drunk off the bus because he’s harassing us.  We’re the ones who appreciate that sort of thing…  and we’re the ones who will complain if we’re late every day.  We already do.

Maybe I should take this as a sign that this (short) week would be a good time to practice getting up that half-hour early to see how bad it will be when I switch jobs.  Even if that bus driver is running late, the worst case would be that he gets me to work *on time*.