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“There are all sorts of things that I see during my working day that give me such pleasure,” an Auckland bus driver says.
An Auckland bus driver spoke anonymously to the Herald about what the role is really like after more than 10 years on the job. She is post-retirement age and her bus routes are mostly through central Auckland.
I finished up on the dole, which was the most ghastly thing that
has ever happened to me. I was talking to my brother, who was a bus driver, and he said, “Why don’t you do that?”
When you get behind the wheel, you are the captain of your own ship.
When I first started, you would do two weeks doing nights and then two weeks doing mornings. It disrupted your sleep terribly. It was awful.
[The shifts] change daily. You might get the same trips two or three days a week, but it varies. Sometimes you’re doing one lot of routes, and then you might be doing something completely different the next day.
You could do five hours of driving without a break through Auckland traffic.
It’s quite tough.
There’s something called bus driver’s bowel.
Who’s going to say to a busload full of people, “Excuse me, I just have to go to the toilet, and I might be some time”.
One of my friends … would be frantic. I used to see this look on her face – a couple of times she thought she was going to wet her pants.
She had to run into a shop and say “Please can I use your toilet?” A lot of places won’t let you.
If people are waiting for the bus, it’s pretty hard to leave them waiting there while you go to the toilet.
I struggle most with the [passengers] who are obviously telling lies when they get on … certain people are going to say, “I’ve just topped up [despite the bus card indicating insufficient funds]”.
I wish they’d say, “I haven’t got any money, can I have a free ride?” Yeah, go and sit down.
There are also some people I [have to ask to get off the bus]. I feel dreadful about it because I know in a lot of cases it’s not their fault.
A lot of homeless people catch rides. I understand that, because how else are they going to get around? You pick them up and you know that they’re going to the City Mission for something to eat.
That’s something I’ve had to be working on for myself; to keep my judgment to myself and be nice to everybody.
We’re in a glass cage … but I never want to make somebody so angry they want to hit me.
When you’re doing a morning shift, you’re picking up kids going to school, work, university. They want a safe ride.
People are different at night.
At the end of the day, they might have had a couple of drinks; they might have had a really bad day at work and sometimes they take it out on the driver.
I’ve been abused a lot of times. There have been times when I’ve had to call the police.
Before we had safety doors, we were within reach of any [passenger] who wanted to grab us.
There was a drunk man on my bus one night.
He started shouting that I was going the wrong way. I wasn’t, but he started demanding that I go a different way. I was saying, “No, no, no, no”.
He got more and more aggressive. He was a big man and he was standing over me, shouting. I stopped the bus. I said, “I want you to get off”. He just went on and on.
Then two of my big, burly passengers got up and frogmarched him off the bus.
If I’d been on my own, what would have happened?
Some of those things that happen to you, you’d rather forget them.
It’s a part of the job. We’re driving through what can be quite bad traffic and if people on the bus are misbehaving, it’s one more thing that could cause an accident.
I used to get very panicked.
When you first start, you go really slow; you don’t know what you’re doing half the time, even though I had several weeks of training.
I was very generous with my time. I would do things in my time that I wasn’t paid for to keep the timetable.
But what they keep saying to us is: safety first, timetable second; if you’re late, call up and say I’m late.
A lot of the new drivers will try their best to keep to the timetable, even though it’s impossible sometimes – there’s so much traffic that you simply cannot get through.
People who are waiting for the bus are looking at their watches as you’re coming up to pick them up, and you know they’re going, “Why is this bus so late?”
We moan a bit about that.
That’s one of the things that I have to talk to myself about. I can open the door defensively and think that they’re going to have a go. But if I calm down enough, I can say, “Hello, sorry I’m late”.
In fact, a lot of the time it’s my imagination that they’re looking at me sideways.
When I go into the depot, I might look around and there are no women there; there are only blokes, but I don’t mind. A lot of them are my friends. I’m not worried about the fact I’m the only woman.
The biggest misconception people have about bus drivers is [they think] you’re so dumb you can’t do anything else but drive a bus.
I might have had qualms when I went in to do the training … but it didn’t last very long.
There are lots and lots of very intelligent people who drive buses.
I [get paid] around $30 an hour… When I started, it was something like under $20 an hour.
All the good bits outweigh the bad bits massively.
I don’t get lonely at work because most of the time I’ve got people on board.
There are all sorts of things that I see during my working day that give me such pleasure and I finish with a big grin on my face.
Some people look really glum when they get on, and then they always say, “thank you, driver” when they get off. It’s lovely.
What gives me the most joy is when people bring their little children on.
They’re like wee drunks, really. They’ll sing, they talk at the top of their voice … and they laugh.
There was one day a little kid up on the upper deck. I could hear the [song] The Wheels On The Bus … all the way into town.
Varsha Anjali is a lifestyle journalist at the Herald. She is based in Auckland.
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