Time to Call out All The Stops!

Here’s an interesting read about how it’s law that OC Transpo drivers (if not all city bus drivers?) need to call out all stops during their route. This stemmed from a blind man; Terrance Green, getting frustrated with the lack of ‘call-outs’ and brought the 20 year old policy to do so into the court system.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Deadline+looms+calling+stops/1403843/story.html

You can read the article yourself but my favourite part is this:

At the time, the company said it would address the problem in a reasonable amount of time. At first, a company directive and spot-checks seemed to be doing the job. But earlier this year, OC Transpo applied for an extension to the end of the year to get the problem solved fully, largely by installing automated systems to announce the stops on all buses.

Green argued against the extension, saying there’s nothing stopping the company from getting drivers to shout out the stops or use intercoms to do it.

Damn right Green should argue against the extension. I’m not going to knock on OC Transpo in general this time around, but bring up the fact that some people are so freaking lazy nowadays that they would rather ask for an extension in installing automated systems rather than SPEAKING INTO A MICROPHONE EVERY FIVE MINUTES. Good Lord, this is the equivalent of asking me to reply to every email I receive. “What? That’s a ridiculous request! What do you mean people are expecting a reply? Who cares?!” At least, that’s what I figure is going through the head of some of these drivers.

You know, I’m not even going to begin to make it look like I know what a city bus driver goes through in a day. I’m sure it’s a grueling job sometime…at least in my head it would be grueling to sit on a bus for eight hours a day (if not more!) and drive around the city a bunch of times. But I would hope that somewhere, the higher principle of being a servant to the public comes into play and everyone should just go out of their way to help out. That’s how I feel as a public servant. We had a woman who worked with us and she would always say “We’re doing the people’s work!” and have a smile on her face. I had never really thought about my life as a public servant until that point. It’s true. I am helping out the public in some way and I’m going to do whatever it takes to help them out. Even if it would require me to announce the name of a stop every couple of blocks which would amount to 100 times a day. Is it tedious work? Perhaps. Does it help out some people on the bus? For sure.