Minor Inconveniences.

What is it about bus drivers that their job infuriates them so much? Yes, I am a thirty-four year old man, but this week I was forced to use public transport, as my car decided to give up on life this morning, in the middle of traffic. It was working fine until I got a round about near central London, where it just stopped; literally, It stopped, right in the line of fire of haggard, rush hour drivers, that really didn’t want to have to deal with any complications at eight twelve in the morning. It really isn’t the time of day anyone in such a need of rushing should have to deal with anything more then getting out of the house and getting to work. I mean, crossings are bad enough, but a car breaking down on a roundabout is just mental. It’s the worst place, in fact; not only are you hindering traffic, you’re right where everyone else literally needs to cross over. And, in central London! Where better? As soon as the car started stalling, I could feel myself thinking ‘Shit, not here! Anywhere but here!’ and when it stopped, god, I felt a bit like that woman in Halloween H20, in the Kitchen who tripped over and realised it was too late to escape Michael Myers’ fatal stabbings in the head. A bit like that, it was. But, for me, it wasn’t a real knife, more metaphorical stabbings with looks of hatred and about seventy (possibly more) horns telling me, metaphorically, that I was a cunt. So, of course, I called the RAC to get me out of the mess that my car had dragged me, screaming ‘NO! JESUS CHRIST! THEIR EYES!’ into. But, of course, it’s central London, and the traffic is ravenous (as I was finding out, sitting there with a fair few people wanting me dead) so the bloke said that it would be at least half an hour. So, what could I do? There was enough room for people to get past my car, but only just, which meant that there wasn’t room for more than one lane of traffic to move at a time. It was a nightmare. I just sat in my car, wishing I wasn’t and were somewhere else, not inconveniencing London. I rang up my office and told them that I would be late, and why. Penny from reception shared my grief.
“Fucking hell, Peter. Have they not rammed your car out of the way and off the road yet?”
“No, and I’m quite surprised they haven’t yet. I’ve had about the entirety of Central London’s motor population call me a wanker, though. So, it’s not all bad”
“You must feel like the lucky one, and I’m the one in the boring office, when I could be told how twatish I was” She said, laughing at me. “I’ll tell Francis”
“Thanks” click.
Well, to cut a long story shorter, the man came, and hooked the car and went off with it and told me that I’d have to get make my own way to “wherever it is you’re going” because he “wasn’t a taxi service”, a fact I’m not so sure about because he did seem to give a fair few opinions that were vaguely offensive and made several references to immigrants as he chatted to me while hooking up my car to his van.
So, yes, the bus was to be my only way of getting to work unless I was to walk ten miles, and to be frank, I’d rather pay for my journey then walk that. Why is it that bus drivers always seem to think that they are the most amazing humans gifted of opinions and decisions in all existence? I got on the bus, and I didn’t know what the hell I was meant to pay, so I asked him, as you would. If you don’t know something, you ask the expert, simple. But it clearly wasn’t simple, and I was obviously meant to know this, because he just looked at me as if I had just told him ‘I only pay in coppers, is that okay?’ He sighed to himself, and to me for being unknown to the price of a fare, many times. Finally, he told me the price. One pound, seventy-two (why the two? Do they really need that extra two pence from me? Which means, because I don’t carry coppers around if I can, that I needed to give him an extra five pence coin, thus him giving me a two and one pence coin for my change, which I know will just sit in my wallet for the next few months, finally giving it to a busker in the street, as I had no use for it) for a single ticket; ridiculous pricing.
I did find it hilarious though to be told by Jenny that Francis (the boss) wasn’t to know about what happened because her and Frank made a point to distract him from his daily round of the office, as he likes to survey his workplace and subsequently scrutinize anyone who’s being ‘tardy’, as he puts it. Honestly, I can understand now why people told us that school was preparing for the real world. The only thing that has changed is that you get paid to be doing this, and it’s less likely that your colleges is going to be sitting on their desk neighbour’s desk at half ten, discussing why Jade Goody needs to be a great dame. Thankfully, that discussion was at lunchtime between Phyllis (the cleaner) and Trish (office, although I’m not sure what she actually does with her time, bar flexing her fingers across her desk for several hours) and was a discussion on pantomime and not being a contender for a royal allegiance.