This topic was first raised in the Omnibus2.0 blog about 10 days ago. The posting was very damning of the idea that drivers should be allowed to wear shorts in order for the driver to “be maintaining a professional standard of appearance”.
Then Leon Daniels took the baton and ran with it even more determinedly managing to show how out of touch a main board director of a bus company plc can be! Leon wrote “For the avoidance of doubt I have no trouble driving a bus for a full shift in my uniform trousers, shirt and tie. ……. I have the cab aircon on and the cab window SHUT so that the cab stays cool, and I turn off the sources of all known heat like the saloon lights, cab lights, etc.” How far out of touch with reality can you get? Give me a bus with aircon and I too would happily wear trousers, shirt and tie PLUS a jacket if you’d like! Leon, I challenge you to rewrite that statement to reflect what 99% of bus drivers (who don’t have aircon in the cab) have to cope with in summer by writing ‘I have no trouble driving a bus for a full shift in my uniform trousers, shirt and tie even if it does not have aircon’. Incidentally the internal lighting if left on by mistake only emits a very small amount of heat. By far the biggest factor is the number of passengers each of which is radiating around 120 watts of heat. 43 passengers produce 5 kilowatts of heat, the equivalent of five electric heater bars being on in the bus.
Then Omnibuses2.0 returned with the results of their poll on the subject which for me contained a bit of a surprise. I expected the drivers to vote to be overwhelmingly in favour of shorts (until we get aircon I don’t think that will change) and it was 70% for and 30% against. The managers were almost 50:50 in their voting. But the greatest supporters of shorts were the passengers 85% in favour and only 15% against!
So, we have the managers believing that shorts should not be worn because “The real reason should be maintaining a professional standard of appearance. It’s what the public expects” (Omnibese2.0) and “A smartly-dressed, clean and tidy driver already gives passengers a good impression which makes them feel comfortable and assured” (Leon Daniels) yet these same passengers are more in favour of shorts than anyone else.
I’m still waiting for the hot weather….
I will be wearing my shorts until September 30th !!
Stagecoach are pretty enlightened in this respect, allowing shorts to be worn for 5 months of the year, and even offering them free as part of the uniform allocation. Not the case with all companies.
Some drivers do seem unable (or unwilling) to dress smartly regardless of whether they are wearing shorts or not.
“The real reason should be maintaining a professional standard of appearance.”
I was on a bus today. The driver was wearing shorts. The issue of “professional standard of appearance” was not that the driver was wearing shorts.
It was that the driver was too lazy to pull in around a “keep left” traffic island, so went flying round the other side, only to come a cropper on seeing a cement mixer was coming the other way and he had no where to pull in (it had to squeeze past on the pavement). The bus was also in a terrible state and very dirty.
Until the other more pressing issues have been sorted, there’s no point moaning about shorts, which can actually look smart anyway.