THE DRIVER

For the benefit of their employees, EA provides a shuttle bus service that ferries people to and from the Burnaby campus and Skytrain stations. It’s nice of them to provide this service even though there are strong rumours they’ll be cutting it in the spring, in yet another cost-cutting measure.

When I’m not working OT, I despise taking the later shuttles when going home. There’s this one driver that really gets on my nerves. When he actually arrives early to pick up passengers (which isn’t very often), he won’t let anyone on. Instead, he’ll lock up the bus and run inside to use the washroom or make some phone calls. Employees either have to stand outside in the cold or run back into the lobby to wait for him to finish whatever he’s doing. How difficult is it to let people on, take the keys and then run inside?

When the bus finally departs, he invariably has the radio tuned into this hardcore Christian talk station. He doesn’t strike me as a particularly religious dude but there he is, listening to that station. He also leaves it on loud enough that the entire bus can hear it. When I say the station is hardcore, every minute or so someone is saying something about “salvation” or “our Lord, Jesus Christ”. Keep in mind that I don’t have anything against the guy for being a Christian or any religion but don’t have some sorta preachy radio station blasting away while I’m trying to get home. You don’t see me knocking on his front door, trying to tell him about the ways of the Jedi.

The dude is also a very inconsiderate driver. On his route to Gilmore Station, there are two considerable bumps in the road that every other shuttle driver graciously slows down for. This guy doesn’t seem to even notice that those bumps are there. Invariably, he just guns it through the bumps. People who happen to be sitting at the rear, without exaggeration, get tossed out of their seats toward the ceiling. The first couple of times I didn’t realize this and I got owned by this moron. If I’m on his bus, I always sit up front, even if that means the Jesus talk is louder.

The last piece of crap that we have to deal with is his stupid “end game” at the end of the route. The other drivers just drop us off at the designated drop off point at Gilmore which means just going straight from our main route. This guy won’t have any of that. Because the drop off area points him in the wrong direction when the employees all de-bus, he takes this weird detour right near the Skytrain station. He makes an extra right, then makes a left into this cul-de-sac, circles the cul-de-sac, then comes out of that to make a right, and then finally drives down half a block back to the station. He’s not even supposed to be stopped where he drops us off. Because it takes several extra minutes to do this detour, invariably someone misses a train they could have taken if he had just taken the direct route.

Writing this post just reminded me how stupid it is for us to put up this guy. I think I’m going to make a complaint tomorrow.