How the 4 weeks between each 193 duty seem to fly!

As you may recall this is a Park + Ride duty which is OK during the week but truly awful on a Saturday when a totally different type of customer uses the service. My first circuit left the car park at 08:40 and as soon as I arrived at the car park I was greeted with “When did the parking price to park go up to £2.70?”. “Sorry, I’ve no idea. It’s been that price as long as I’ve been doing this”. “But I don’t have change and the machine doesn’t give change. Can you change a £5 note?”. “Sorry, I can’t. I’ve only got a few 10p’s and 20p’s”. “Why don’t you have change for the machine!”. “I don’t have change specifically for the machine because the bus company are nothing to do with the Council who operate the car park. Secondly, nearly everyone who uses the bus is a car park user and travels free. The only people who pay, hop on and off in town, for a 40p fixed fare. I don’t take £5 during a whole duty that’s why I don’t have £5 in change before I even start my first trip”. “I going to write to the council and complain”. “Yes, and I’m going to write about you in my blog!” (no, I didn’t say that but it would have been fun!).

On the next circuit I’m leaving the car park when a passenger ran up the aisle shouting “stop the bus”. Seems she left ‘something important’ in her car and needs to retrieve it. Then she says “Could you drive me back?”. Drive her back! I’d first need to go 75% of the way into the town to a roundabout enabling me to go back, if I did this I’d end up behind the bus after me when I’d get to leave the car park second time round. So the answer was “No” and I didn’t have time to explain why.

Circuits 3, 4 , 5 ……. every one of them I think, produced at least one passenger getting on and then saying my husband/wife is just buying a ticket. They think that they’ve seized control of the bus by standing at the front saying that (like a hijack). And then expect the bus to wait while the parking ticket is bought, taken back to the car and placed on the dashboard, the car is locked, and then they walk to the bus. It doesn’t work on my bus! I politely say my departure time is less than 1 minute away and I’ll be leaving on time so as to keep the service running smoothly. They can either come with me now, and their spouse follow a few minutes later on the next bus, or perhaps they’d both like to travel together on the next bus. I don’t think they believe me until the door starts closing on time whilst the spouse is still strolling back to the car to place the ticket!

Then there was the non-car park passenger who wanted to go two stops and therefore needed to pay the 40p fare ……. with a £20 note! I apologised for not having change and suggested he took the next bus which came along (he was at the railway station which sees a bus every minute or two, all going into town). No, he was adamant he wanted to stay on my bus for his 2 stop journey. So I then explained that he couldn’t travel for free, I couldn’t give him change and his only option was to accept a change voucher. “What’s that?”. I went in to the usual explanation that it’s an IOU from the company and can be changed for cash on any other Stagecoach bus or at the bus station. “But if you haven’t got change why should any other bus driver have change?”. At this point I’m losing the will to live. “Because they sell tickets costing £’s not pence, they sell daily tickets and weekly tickets, their passengers pay for travel unlike 98% of those on a Park + Ride bus”. He then agreed to accept a change voucher. It’s taken so long for all of this that 2 ‘regular’ buses he could have used have passed me and the Park + Ride bus after me has caught up with me and is sitting behind. Aaaaaaaaaaaarghg!!!! Nurse ….. nurse, my medication please!.