15 Minutes Bleeds into Eternity
Given the small number of you who actually still read this blog, I should be writing other things. FTDS seems so 20-teens nowadays. Somehow, Deke lost his connection with readers en masse. Even though most stare at the phone every available moment, they're not willing to read more than a few sentences from a bus operator who has been down the road over 300,000 miles in The Beast. Some of you have zipped much further, so my words may be like a needle stuck in a record groove. Others are so green you won't bud for another 45 minutes. (Veterans will get this.)
Still, I see so much to write about it's frustrating because the audience left 15 seconds after my first 15 minutes. Others grew tired of me trying to get over that long speed bump which stopped me from writing about what we do "out there". You left me for Instabuns, Twittler or DikTalk. Blogs quickly followed email into yesterville. People became increasingly enamored with short bursts rather than intense missives which actually beckon the mind to engage. Laziness begets the slavery in which we toil without hope for respect.
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It becomes second nature to drive a bus. Operating it becomes even more difficult as the years dim our initial sunny disposition. We're too busy protecting several generations from their phone-stoned state because personal safety somehow became everyone else's job rather than theirs. Whether you're in your 70s-80s, teens or Generation Dumbass, you're so busy looking at your phone you fail to see real life happening just a few feet away. Transit operators have to be 100x more diligent today than just a few years ago due to the rapidly-diminishing eyesight of a phone-stoned public.
So many times I hear a MAX operator whaling on the high hat, attempting to blast some motorist/pedestrian/freakin' scooterist out the way of their 200,000 lb. machine of potential human dismemberment. My bus roll is no different. As my light changes to green, it's imperative to predict the phone (or pothead) stoners who blithely step into an intersection without a clue there's impending death bearing down on them. If we beep the horn in warning, our only thanks is a no-look one-fingered salute. As if they're saying "Don't bother me I'm watching a stupid dog trick." Sorry folks, I already know your single-digit IQ score; you don't need to illustrate it.
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Portland is in the midst of a horrendous cop crunch. Motorists realize there's virtually NO police presence save for the most dire emergencies. Consequently, they tempt fate more than their addled minds are prepared for. Running HARD red lights, racing around like they're late to their own funeral, racing to the car's exhaust ahead of them as if they're a junkie sucking the next fix. Zipping around my bus as I stop to drop or plop. My steel protectorate is effective to those within, but once they step off they can't see dumbass Izzy Impatient in Mommy's flashy BMW. Izzy cannot see through or around my large vehicle yet they consider my stopping as a free pass to blow past. No matter the double-yellow line supposedly prohibiting it. So many times, I have had to lay on my horn to alert the former passenger there's a speeding death ray headed their way. Lots of close calls, fingers lifted to me from both those saved and warned, heavy sighs of relief from my oft-paralyzed lungs. I'd rather you flip me off as a live human, than watch a sheet cover your defiantly-deceased body.
WAKE UP PEOPLE!!! PUT THE PHONE DOWN LONG ENOUGH TO WATCH AFTER YOURSELF!!!
(Enough about how "lame" Baby Boomers are; at least our parents taught us basic safety. Y'all Millennials are coffin magnets.)
I don't know why people are in a hurry to get to jail or their own funeral. It mystifies me, yet also keeps me even more vigilant. While folks may feel obliged to take chances and put their safety in the hands of an increasingly-more reckless motoring public, I'm paid to keep everyone safe, within and around my vehicle. I wince so many times in fear each day, my face is sore by the end of the shift. My job's difficulty increases tenfold every year, yet Management keeps rolling backwards. Oblivious as the phone stone public we serve.
My head aches, along with every inch of my body. Still, management has no idea what it's like "out there". It thinks in terms of statistics, and what we "should" do every waking moment. Our job has become an expendable one as those whose jobs should be to protect and guide us seek to trip and cut our throats at every step. They "phish" for every possible misstep we could possibly make. They suspend/terminate at will, often stupidly and without logic reason while they beg new people to apply with the dangling carrot of a "bonus" that takes three full years to appreciate. Meanwhile, the newbies are subject to a harsh, unforgiving work environment few in the public can or care to appreciate.
* * * * *
I haves more than I hasn't. My Beloved has been with me 30 years this fall. We share three beautiful, strong-willed and accomplished children and two wonderful grandchildren. I'm currently writing three projects at once, hoping to complete at least one of them this year. Our home is beautiful, the neighborhood is special and dear. Our health has declined recently but we always find fun and share our love like there's no tomorrow... for it is never given. But weekends invariably give way to the grind of a transit work week. 12 hours a day away from home, a grueling way to pay the bills. So I must, these hands falling victim to arthritis making my writing sometimes physically painful.
Truly, it's a tough world out here. But WE are intrinsically tougher.
I write emails to our GM which are either ignored, unread or discarded. Even when I compliment him on a positive note. He no longer cares like he promised he would. No matter his "Rosey" newsletters sent via company email we're not compensated to read although expected to. He's become just like his predecessors in these short few years; soft/pampered, hiding from criticism, seemingly shielded via his supposed untouchable perch. It's sad, because when I met him he seemed the Anti-Former GM. Now, his indifference mirrors a past when the GM held himself so much higher than us bottom feeders that we could not communicate. He promised not to be so at the beginning. Then he cast us aside. Except for the occasional meaningless platitudes, he seemingly believes he makes a difference. I guess that's part of the job. Tell us what you think we wanna hear. Ignore us especially when we explode through the bullshit. Heroes, my ass... we're still just numbers. A full third of us don't even exist in the eyes of management. So it is, and always has been.
Sam served our country in the military. He worked his way up, fighting for respect every minute. He knows what it's like to be disrespected, yet he has slipped into the ugly fold of what the "Bored of Directors" and "MetLow" expects of its minions. Just do what you're told. Jump over that fence, you're done. There's no room for independent or forward-thinking innovation. Only capital projects, which butter the bread of the overfed.
- Leave work for home, you're on your own. Even when you're in your 70s and get attacked and beaten after checking to make sure someone is okay during the hottest day of the year.
- Mistakenly scratch your ear and accidentally answer your phone via hearing aid bluetooth device while in the seat? You're now expected to buy different hearing aids that are "transit compliant" even though they do not adequately serve your needs. Five day suspension, AND YOU buy the hearing aids we COMMAND. Too bad if they put your passengers in danger because everything sounds like a Charlie Brown cartoon.
* * * * *
Such is what you get when kids are allowed to "manage" the adults. Operators should be the most respected and supported cogs of the wheel, along with mechanics. Together, we make the wheels of transit roll. Without US, there is no need for THEM. Meanwhile, middle management is coddled and allowed to stumble along unhinged to the point where abuse seems encouraged.
GM doesn't respond to me any more. He promised he would, then reneged. When he finally reached out (through his assistant), over a year after a semi-promising first meeting, pride itself dictated I respectfully decline. I had high hopes for him. Yeah, I sent him some stinging messages. Thought his military service had prepared him for straight talk and harsh criticism. WRONG. Now I'm nobody. Guess I hurt his feelings.
I'm like other late-night bus operators, those of us who are forgotten with every "celebration of service". Just another dark star unseen in a brightly-lit city sky. Okay, boss. I get it. You don't get US. Please don't call us family until you treat us ALL as such.
We get even tougher while management charges harder. The union seems hand-in-hand with Sam, rather than an expected adversary. Neither has meaningful oversight, yet we're still micro-managed to the point they wonder why we retire or leave en masse for greener pastures. Management resorts to bribing an unsuspecting labor pool. Unresolved arbitrations pile up, with little hope for resolution.
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." Why? Because even though the Pacific NW is beautiful, parts of it suck. Don't buy into the schtick, newbies. Make our union stronger; release us from simple compliance and reckless insult.
I'll just leave it there.
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