There's a reason why I'm not a GO bus operator

Can you imagine?

Two words: Coroner's Inquest.

I've been hanging onto this post for a while, just feeling out the audience here, because we've got a merry band of anonymous idiots who really don't know when it's time to pick their balls up off the floor and head back to the village.

As many of you know and some of you don't know, on occasion I will haul my ass onto a GO bus as part of my daily GO Transit journey. A few weeks ago, I took a late bus home from Oshawa station.

There's only about eight of us on the bus. The operator, a middle aged dude, somewhat pleasant, excellent situational awareness skills (I love to study people when they drive, you can learn a lot about their personality) who kept his two-way radio at a reasonable volume.

As the bus rolled along King Street through Oshawa's downtown, the silence among us passengers and the hum of the bus was broken by a loud shout of "Yo!" from the back. It startled the crap out of me and equally rattled the operator who slowed the bus significantly because like me, he suspected the shouter had missed a stop.

Nope.

The shouter had decided to phone a friend and not realizing that mobile phones aren't soup cans tied to a string, spoke at a volume one would hear a person use when shouting over the roar of a crowd at a baseball game.

This pissed off the bus operator.

This made me want to nutpunch the guy because I, and my seat mates, were now being subjected to his evening plans of "bluntin' bowls and watchin' ho's" and who the best "brah" would be to score "some shit" complete with repeating back an address of where said "shit" would be. (Queue eye roll).

Dude was L-O-U-D. And stupid.

This was disrespectful in many ways. First, one-way mobile conversations are distracting for the people being forced to listen. Two, the operator of a vehicle is also distracted because his brain, as much as he doesn't want it to, can't zone out the boisterous chatter of Mr. Marijuana Man.

Eventually, Marijuana Man proceeds to get off the bus. No longer on his cell, he makes his way to the front of the bus after pushing the call button. I could hardly contain myself. I was hoping the operator would say something to this jerk for scaring the crap out of everyone.

Nope.

Some of y'all just too polite. I know the public is the first to go after all y'all throats if you dare stand your ground with a-holes like this punk, so Imma pick up the ball for ya. Heard?

Politely, but in my best school teacher "Imma take you down" voice, I tell this young man that his loud, ridiculous grandstanding of a drug phone call was rude and disruptive. That he needs to be mindful of his surroundings and understand that many of us don't care what his plans are for the night, especially off-duty police officers heading home from work.

Not that there were any on the bus, but you never know.

I saw the operator catch my eye. "You go girl." He mouthed.

Oh... I can go.

Marijuana Man mumbled something that sounded like "Bitch, please" which I guess is how he says he's sorry, and scrambled off the bus. So I made this big production of pulling out my BlackBerry and gesturing and pointing and pretending like I was reading out street names, while staring right at him while the bus was stopped at the light and he was waiting to cross. The driver hadn't closed the door yet and the interior was illuminated, so I know he saw me.

Why?

Because Marijuana Man began to run.

Bad boy, bad boys, whatcha gonna do. Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

The rest of us laughed our asses off. For. The. Win.