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The dumbest man on the bus
So, this weekend, Jethrien and I went down to DC to see her folks. We took the bus, mostly because it's far, far cheaper than Amtrak or renting a car. The ride down onvolved a little traffic, but we got there just fine, if a little tired.
The ride back, on Sunday, was a bit more troublesome. A nasty rainstorm followed us up the coast, and there was a decent amount of Sunday-afternoon traffic. The four-hour ride took about six hours. Now, we'd packed snacks and plenty of reading material, and we'd driven this route in similar conditions, so we were pretty much okay.
Not so for the "gentleman" sitting behind me. Now, just to give you an idea what sort of person he was, when we first got on, he claimed to have the flu to try to keep people from sitting next to him (the seat was eventually taken by a teenage girl who he didn't make the comment to), and was playing his GBA with the sound all the way up (Final Fantasy 6 Advance, in case you care--I know that music well). But when the bus ride stretched into its fifth hour, then the complaining started, "My grandmother could drive better than this! This is the worst bus driver ever! He had a chance to beat all this traffic but he kept letting people go! He's only taking his time because he gerts overtime pay!"
(Think about that last one for a moment. I realize not everyone thinks like an economist, but even the smallest amount of knowlege of business practices would tell you that giving bus drivers extra pay for running late is perhaps the stupidest practice a bus company could implement. I give Greyhound a bit more credit than that. Also, most of this litany managed to ignore the pouring rain.)
Then he rambled to the girl next to him (probably half his age, mind you) about the date he was going to miss, then he tried to yell up to the bus driver (and got ignored), then he cursed some more. It was a good thing I had snacks, or he would have been the first person made into fellow-passenger-jerky when my blood sugar dipped.
The scariest part? They let this man vote.
The ride back, on Sunday, was a bit more troublesome. A nasty rainstorm followed us up the coast, and there was a decent amount of Sunday-afternoon traffic. The four-hour ride took about six hours. Now, we'd packed snacks and plenty of reading material, and we'd driven this route in similar conditions, so we were pretty much okay.
Not so for the "gentleman" sitting behind me. Now, just to give you an idea what sort of person he was, when we first got on, he claimed to have the flu to try to keep people from sitting next to him (the seat was eventually taken by a teenage girl who he didn't make the comment to), and was playing his GBA with the sound all the way up (Final Fantasy 6 Advance, in case you care--I know that music well). But when the bus ride stretched into its fifth hour, then the complaining started, "My grandmother could drive better than this! This is the worst bus driver ever! He had a chance to beat all this traffic but he kept letting people go! He's only taking his time because he gerts overtime pay!"
(Think about that last one for a moment. I realize not everyone thinks like an economist, but even the smallest amount of knowlege of business practices would tell you that giving bus drivers extra pay for running late is perhaps the stupidest practice a bus company could implement. I give Greyhound a bit more credit than that. Also, most of this litany managed to ignore the pouring rain.)
Then he rambled to the girl next to him (probably half his age, mind you) about the date he was going to miss, then he tried to yell up to the bus driver (and got ignored), then he cursed some more. It was a good thing I had snacks, or he would have been the first person made into fellow-passenger-jerky when my blood sugar dipped.
The scariest part? They let this man vote.
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While we were waiting for the bus, a woman who apparently does the trip weekly was telling us about similar disasters that had befallen her attempts to take Amtrak, including a train full of passengers sitting in that station for three hours. (And they paid three times as much!)
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