All right, bus drivers. Some of us other bus drivers have noticed you misbehaving, and we're not thrilled about it. Let's see if any of this sounds familiar.

1. Wow.

• By now everyone knows the 65/67 schedule is among the worst in the system. At least, passengers and drivers know. Scheduling knows too, but their data shows 70% of its trips run on time, and the only reason that could be true is due to operators killing themselves to keep schedule. When I’ve driven it, I’ve noticed behaviors like these: 
  

1. My leader leaving early, thus forcing me to pick up more passengers.
   
2. My leader not pulling out at all, “hiding,” as it were, so that I go in front of her/him and have to do all the work, picking up the double load of both their people and mine.
3. Trips that would normally pass Nathan Hale High School when it lets out “hiding,” not pulling out, so that I have to go in front of them and get slammed with students.
4. Worst offender: an operator who combined much of the above and went one further. She sat at Northgate, leaving right behind me instead of the correctly scheduled 10 minutes in front of me, only picking up passengers when I forced them on her via skip-stopping… and who then vanished into thin air just before we hit UW Light Rail, instead deadheading back to base via Montlake Blvd and I-5. I was left with over a hundred people at the light rail station and only a 40-footer to carry them in. Unconscionable.

• Here’s another one from across the lake, smacking of a similar stench of laziness: Bellevue Base operators veteran enough to know better than to leave Issaquah 8 minutes early, so that they slip in right behind an inbound 271 starting at Eastgate, such that they don’t have to pick anyone up all the way through Bellevue. Meanwhile, passengers who needed them in Issaquah have missed them due to the unexpected early departure.

Gosh, these guys are in a hurry to get to the terminal. What's so exciting about the U District layover?

Then there’s downtown.

• Why do I see diesel operators blowing past their fellow trolley operators putting up poles? Do they know how tricky that is? Why don’t they get out and help, or at least use their coach to block the roadway from cars getting too close to their fellow operator in the street?
• The one that still nags at me is a northbound 70 who, at 11:30 at night, skipped northbound 3rd and Pike, the most important bus stop in the city, blowing past passengers with destinations, forcing them to wait for the next bus at a time and place where you really don’t want to be kept waiting around. I couldn’t believe it. The folks on the street were nonplussed. Maybe he was  new, or forgot, or didn’t know any better?
• Nope. When I got to the U District terminal, I saw the same coach. I knew his piece of work had one final inbound trip, but instead of running it, I saw him turn right on 45th and head for I-5, to deadhead back to Base. Why didn’t I call it in? I’m too nice.
• Another night my leader on the 7/49 came back to me. A nice new fellow, younger hapa man like myself.

“Hey,” he said. “Do you know anything about the guy in front of me? I mean, has he said anything to you?”
“No, why? Who is it?”
“I dunno, but he’s skipping the first few stops of every trip. He’s not picking up the guys here, or at Henderson.”
“Oh my gosh,” I said. “That's ridiculous. He doesn't want sleepers, is that what it is? Or street guys? He's not supposed to only pick up people that he likes!" I snorted at the very concept. "He should just suck it up and do the friggin' work!"

2. The Big Idea

In my opinion, trying to remember a lot of little rules isn't as effective as remembering one big idea. Don't bother trying to retain everything in this post. Let's just focus on the big idea. What’s the big idea? This is the big idea.

Care.

As in, the verb. Do the work like you give a [expletive of your choice]. Like you care. About the people, about your coworkers, about yourself. Take some pride in your work. All the actions above share a common element: laziness.

Does being lazy and incompetent make you feel better? No. It’s no way to pass through the years. That’ll wear your identity of yourself down to something small and ugly, and you won’t like what you see in the mirror. Maybe you’re already there. The way out is to feel good about what you do, and the impact it has on others.

In other words, the big idea is: Work together. Slow down. You don’t need to blast down 3rd, passing coaches on the right and cutting them off, like the 70 I share 3rd with every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening. I have no idea what’s so exciting to him about 3rd and Main that he’s in such a mad rush to get there. I’m genuinely terrified when he zips around me, whipping that 60,000 pound vehicle around like it was a plastic Tonka at the beach. Doesn’t it feel better to drive slower? To have less stress, not more? Am I crazy or something?

3. Always Forever Now

It’s not about rushing. These aren’t taxis. You’re paid by the minute, not by how dangerously you get there. Maybe you've been told that your job is to get people from point A to point B.

That is incorrect.

Your job is transport people safely between point A and point B. You don't have to get them to point B. You won't be penalized if something happens and you can't get them there. You just have to run it safely and provide good customer service right now. This block. It's about the quality of time spent while you're getting them there.

Passengers don’t know this, but operators do: breaking your back driving fast will give you almost zero time difference in terms of terminal arrival time. Sure, you got to Henderson two minutes earlier and made an extra green light. But was that really worth it?

Take your time. And remember that your actions have real ramifications to the operators in front of and behind you. If you leave early, you're making things tough for your follower. She’ll have to carry what ought to be your people. This of course makes things tough for passengers too.

If you catch up to your leader, get close to him so you can help him, get some of his people, and take the load off. He should know to skip zones where he doesn’t have dropoffs, which is where you can swoop in and help out. You don’t even have to pass him. I love helping other operators. It makes me feel great, part of something.

4. Let’s end with some Positive Examples.

• I love telling an exhausted Mary at the U District terminal, as I once did when she was having a truly awful day, “Mary, just relax. Go get a sandwich and zone out for an extra 10 minutes and leave after me. I’ll do a double load this trip.” The way her face lit up; someone cared about her. She wasn’t alone.
• Or working something out together. I caught up to Marina northbound on 3rd, and we worked it out between us, all smiles: “Why don't you deadhead to Broadway, and I'll get all of all the downtown people. Faster for everyone, right?” She was thrilled, and able to catch up on schedule.
• Letting buses in for the hard turn on Bell. Or 15th and 45th. Giving room for opposing bus to turn– and seeing them wave thanks to you.
• I remember myself and another operator putting up a third guy's poles, over and over again. He must’ve had a faulty bus. We went all the way up 3rd like this. We laughed about it. He was so appreciative. Doesn’t it feel good to be less alone?
• The wave of gratitude I get from a passing operator when I use the side wire at southbound Union or Jackson and they’re able to pass.
• Or the pleasure of untangling someone’s ropes. Helping them by showing them you can use adjacent wire to get around a deadspot, or here’s how to restart a coach. Or let’s figure out what’s going on here, together. Do we need to wait for air. Is the door air release turned off by accident. These moments are lot less stressful with someone else there in support.

5. Help other bus drivers.

Help them with their sleepers. Help them with their poles. One day, you will need their help. We're on the same team. Let your fellow operator in on 3rd Avenue. Help your leader with the passenger load if you catch up to him or her (deets on both types of skip-stopping here).

Spend some time with the system map. Figure out where the major routes go, and how to get to common destinations so you can answer questions and get a feel for where people are going and what they transfer to. As a supervisor told us when we were starting full time, “take some pride in your work. If you don’t know what bus goes to the U District, or how to get to West Seattle, you need to go get a job working somewhere else.”

I'm not telling you anything you don't already know to do. You're a professional. Slacking off can be addictive, but being your best self just feels better. Everything I know about bus driving I've learned from you guys. I look up to you. Let's not let each other down.

Care. That’s all I suggest.

---

I need to balance the calling out I'm doing above– here are two links appreciating my colleagues, and a third chock-full of tips I've learned from them that I live and die by. It's because I care that I'm as frank as I am above.

• The Swagger I Love: Thoughts on My Fellow Operators
• Bus Driver Appreciation Day: Coronavirus Style
• What I've Learned From Other Bus Drivers

I'll leave it to those around me to conclude whether or not I'm the same person I was eight years ago, when I started my blog. I lack the requisite self-awareness to make such pronouncements.

What I can say is that some of my earlier posts carry a specificity of romantic perspective which was more limited than it is now, and which I've expanded as the years have worn on. I was learning, you see, and still am.

My deep-seated enthusiasm for human existence is in the early posts more exclusively aimed at the downtrodden, those souls with whom I identify most closely. It's easiest for us to sympathize with our own experience, and as a working-class mixed-race adult who will always be, on the inside, a quiet, shy child from a working-class immigrant family, I feel an affinity for those who similarly live in the humble margins, taking life as it comes and making the best of things.

The compass point of my enthusiasm remains weighted for this reason and one more– the people I encounter in the working-class and low income neighborhoods I serve have, in general, been nicer to me. It's fair to state I've observed a greater appreciation of kindness and respect in those populations, and how am I not going to welcome that with open arms?

What I take issue with in my younger self is how I allowed this enthusiasm, these observations and inclinations, to limit my appreciation of people outside the groups under discussion. Youngsters– and humans at large– tend to categorize what they do not understand, and I've fallen for that trap as well. In my early posts you may notice a whiff of condescension toward people who don't engage, commuters and other affluent passenger groups. This reductive and binary sort of thinking, wherein we turn away from one set because of how much we like another, or disregard entire populations based on the high-profile actions of a few, is best described as exactly the type of prejudice I seek to dismantle in my writing, and the reverse prejudice that surfaced in my thinking back then is at best problematic, and at worst hypocritical.

Yes, I feel more loved on routes like the 7. People engage more, smile more, make more eye contact, reach out to each other, remember me. Yes, these observations have led me to develop preferences, bolstered by the congruences of my own background.

But that's not the whole picture. No one culture group has a claim on humanity's best traits. Two things have changed in my life in the interim.

I didn't used to know a lot of wealthy people. I do now. Yes, money has a way of poisoning people. Yes, luxury vehicles tend to drive with less respect for those around them. Yes, apathy and the upper echelon are often bedfellows.

But not all the time. Especially not now, when income disparity is such that most of our city's upper class is just another part of the 99 percent, not the one percent (Level 7 Amazon only makes $153k annually, not the one percent's $7.3 million).

The second element is more important, and it's what happens when you become humbled by tragedy. It's possible to make it through your teen years and perhaps even a chunk of your twenties without slamming into the wall of failures bigger than yourself. Of Things Going Wrong and Just Not Working Out.

Eventually, despite your best efforts, you'll come across an obstacle you can't surmount, that you'll instead have to adjust to living with. Do we come of age in the aftermath, when we realize that everyone around us is damaged goods too, and that they deserve endless and unrelenting forgiveness, because they're trying, as we are, to find love in whatever manner they most cherish– acknowledgement, respect, validation, salvation?

It's okay to be quiet. Introverted. Some of my favorite people thrive by withdrawing, and I know now to better admire them for it.
It's okay to be angry, frustrated by my friendly airs and wishing for silence.

The story of a person who didn't like my colloquial approach at first and angrily accosted me for it, but who would later come around, doesn't need to be told here. It lives best spoken by those two who were there, if at all. It lives best in the rising sensation I had driving away.

Alisha. Thank you.

Not just for the second conversation, but for both of them. You confronted me directly, rather than going through the back channels to my boss's desk, and I respect that. But more importantly, you came up a second time, and shared what you shared: a change of heart, gifted with kinder airs. That takes courage and remarkable grace. I am deeply humbled. I was on the side of town I live in but feel a stranger in, and this affluent commuter had expansive humility enough to apologize for her earlier indignation and admit she felt differently now. It remains one of my favorite moments on the 5: near the tail end of the route with no one else aboard, introducing ourselves as friends at the end of the discussion, erasing a bad night and rewriting it anew.

If her initial resistance to kindness plays into an assumption we might carry– that convivial interaction (especially between classes) is more readily rejected in wealthier areas, I've got a counterexample: a furious homeless man leaving my 10, the last in a line of deboarding passengers whom I was thanking and faring well. When he got to me he snarled threateningly, "Don't say anything to me." I nod-lowered my head, gently raising my hands in the air. He stormed off, upholding the unspoken truce, refraining from whatever his line threatened. He was going through something, and like Alisha on the other end of town, he needed space and silence, not small talk, to work through whatever it was.

There are good people everywhere. Sometimes they just need a little room.