Okay. I was totally wanting to explain my feral cat experience to you all, but it got trumped by my own idiocy! So, of course, I have to explain that!
Here’s how this morning went: I did my usual pre-work ritual and went out to start my car and realized it was snowing, again. Lovely. I knew the roads would be horrible and it would be a tough day of driving the bus. So I get into work and see that I have a trainee today. Perfect. The worst possible day to train someone. (Hey, it is imperative to concentrate on driving in these most worst conditions.) So I explained to the trainee that I would drive the first few hours and then she would take over when the roads got better. So I am down like 15-20 minutes because of the conditions and kept on motoring. After hour number two, I am essentially caught up. Everyone else was late as well, so relatively speaking, I am caught up. I decided that this would be a great time to eat my banana before this most torturous 4B route I had ahead of me.
So I grab my empty Diet Coke bottle and my banana and walk towards the center of our bus station (CBC – CityBus Center). Why? Because I needed to stretch my legs, eat my banana, and I hate filling up my own bus trash can when I can put my empty bottle and banana peel in a big one, as opposed to emptying my small bus trash can later. Okay, banana-eating complete, trash in the proper container, and ready to pull off. Then two more buses pull in and I wait. I got like 9 or 10 people, so all was good. I was already late, so why not wait and get people where they are going?
I finally leave 9 minutes late with between 30 and 40 people and get to campus and drop off most of them. As I get later in my route, I only have three people left. Here’s the funny part. My trainee is not one of them! I stopped and checked all of my interior mirrors, then rubber-necked myself to make sure I wasn’t missing anyone. Nope. Trainee not on the bus. Who loses a trainee??? Yep. This girl does! I laughed my ass off at the hilarity of the situation! Who is that clueless? Yep! That would be me!
So here is what happened: I got off the bus to eat my banana and the trainee got off behind me to go potty. Unfortunately, I never saw her get off and she never told me to wait, so I left after getting my passengers. (my bus was full, I just assumed she was on there!) I don’t even know that management knows about this, (well maybe now), but she was a good sport (when I got back an hour and 20 minutes later) and said, “You left me!”. I said, “Well, I didn’t know you were gone. Tell me next time!”
Here’s my point: People have different things on their mind. Don’t expect them to think of the obvious (or what you perceive as the obvious. Much like “common sense”). Today, I was thinking about getting people safely to where they needed to be. My last thought was the location of a trainee. Hell, I was just trying to drive safely and keep us all alive. State the obvious. Sometimes it is needed!
Ok, that is pretty funny!
LikeLike