h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Because days like this are exactly the kind of day made 'There must be something in the planets'.

It's the 13th. Okay, not Friday the 13th, but the 13th nonetheless.

It's my Friday (a Good Thing, obviously), but instead of my usual 8-4 shift, which would mean getting home shortly after 5.00pm, and getting into a shortly after getting home, I got a 10-6 shift today, which would usually mean getting home shortly after 7pm (see below).

Getting a 10am start meant I had time for breakfast this morning. Normally another Good Thing, only today I managed to turn one ring *on* instead of turning *down* the ring that held the pan that was boiling my eggs. Result: one melted plastic lid, a lot of acrid smoke and a wailing smoke alarm. And a mess of molten plastic to be cleaned up. And a container that now has no lid.

When I got to work I was fully expecting the canning line to be in full swing but there was silence. There was something wrong with the piece equipment that prints the batch number and date on the bottom of the cans.

Later on, someone put too much yeast nutrient into a tank of cider. Result: a Mount Vesuvius, much panicking, a lot of cider on the floor (and some on the ceiling), and a mess to be cleaned up.

Later still, there was something wrong with the boiler so we couldn't run the pasteuriser and a handful of people had to be sent home.

While I was getting changed out of my work clothes I must have dropped my mp3 player on the floor. Not noticing this I then stepped on it and it's banjaxed. It's the only thing that makes my bus journeys to and from work in any way tolerable because most of the people here have no clue how buses work or that there are other people on them. Even the people who use them every day. I have to get another player. Soon. Or I'll posting from a jail cell on a charge of GBH. Or possibly murder.

Getting off work later meant catching a different bus to the one I normally get when I clock off at 4pm. The driver of that particular bus is one who I do my best to avoid. He stops at bus stops when no-one's getting on or off, just on the offchance someone might have forgotten to ring the bell. He slows down (and sometimes even stops) for green lights. He won't move the bus an Ångstrom until 30 seconds after everyone has ambled their way to a seat, sat down and composed themselves. He stops the bus and opens the doors if there's *anyone* walking within 20 yards of a bus stop, then we all sit and watch as the person in questions saunters past. Any traffic light he doesn't slow down for anyway, he somehow manages to catch just as it turns red.

So instead of getting home shortly after 7pm, I got home shortly after 7.30pm. After clocking off at 6pm. With a commute that would take no more than 30 minutes in a car.

Jinnan tonnyx duly poured and drunk

I'll clean up that melted plastic tomorrow. Probably.

Monday the 13th is always worse than a Friday the 13th. Even if it IS your Friday.


http://i.imgur.com/baFQGVB.png

I knew there was something I'd forgotten. Someone I was expecting to get fired today didn't get fired today, so we're all going to have to continue working with them

Yep... Mondays...


http://imgur.com/gallery/UXCBWlW

well, that sounds like a week's worth of yuk all over on the first day. although it's your Friday so... meh.

my commute is more than 1.5 hours. Each way. Every day. mind you in the car it's not much faster and I don't get a chance to jump on strange international trains and photograph the seat covers if i drive. So swings and roundabouts.

oh, I forgot.

So, what are you doing for Bastille Day?

I see what you did there

Knowing you as I do from your posts here and in other places Sho, your slapping hand® would be worn to a stump if you had to use the buses here every day.

Drivers who deliberately drive their bus ahead of schedule.
Drivers who deliberately drive their bus behind schedule.
Drivers who race between bus stops and then sit for anything up to five minutes at time points along the route.
Drivers who crawl between bus stops.
Drivers who don't know where all the stops on their route are.
Drivers who forget to stop after you've rung the bell.
Drivers who forget to open the back doors after you've rung the bell because they got distracted by people getting on at the front doors.
Drivers who slam the brakes on because they didn't notice you standing at the bus stop.
Drivers who drop the front of the bus for everyone, not just the old, infirm and disabled.
Drivers who don't seem to get it that if there's another bus pulling up behind them at a stop shared by more than one route it'd be a good idea to wait a moment because there are probably people on the other bus who need to make the connection, but take off anyway and it's a 30-minute wait for the next bus.
Passengers who are so engrossed in their phone/book/music/staring into oblivion that they don't see the bus until it pulls up at the stop (and drivers *have* to stop if there's anyone at the bus stop).
Passengers who don't even start to think about gathering all their stuff together to get on/off the bus until the bus stops.
Passengers who have no idea which pocket or where in their bag they last put their bus pass or money.
Passengers who don't start looking for their bus pass or money until they're standing in front of the driver, even though they could see the bus coming from half a mile away and stood behind three other people getting on the bus.
Passengers who wait until everyone else has got on/off the bus and the driver is closing/has closed the doors before they decide to get on/off the bus.
Passengers who can't seem to organise themselves to be at the bus stop on time for a bus that only runs every 30, 40, 50, 60 minutes and run for the bus waving frantically, hold the bus up, then have to hunt for their fare.
Passengers who have such a sense of entitlement they argue with the driver that they should be allowed on because their pass expired within the previous 15 minutes.
Passengers who have no clue how to get where they're going and quiz the driver for three or four minutes, even though they've got a smartphone and could easily access the bus company's website or call them.
Schedules so badly written that it's impossible for drivers to stick to them even if they crawl along the road at a snail's pace and *still* have to spend three or four minutes waiting at time points, so not only do you have to wait *for* the bus, you have to wait *on* the bus.
Bus stops that are hangouts for drunks, crackheads, crazies and panhandlers.
A bus schedule that means there are pretty much no buses after 10pm on Sunday.
A national refusal to use a dollar coin, meaning passengers pay their fare by trying to push crumpled, wrinkled dollar bills into a slot, a process which can take up to a minute for each bill to be recognised by the reader (a day pass is $2.50).

I could go on.

The dollar coin thing...


That's been a soap box issue for me since 1985 when I visited England and was introduced to the pound coin. I was so enthralled with buying lunch with pocket change.

Mostly the problem goes back to the Susan B. Anthony 1$ coin that came out in the '70s. It was too similar to the quarter so people refused it. That's another reason I liked the 1£ coin; it was made distinctive by adding thickness rather than just diameter.

So, a few decades later and the US Mint tries again with the Sacawhoozits. They made it a bit more distinctive by giving it a smooth edge and making it out of a different color alloy, but guess what dimensions it had. They made it exactly the same size as the Susan B. Anthony to appease those vending companies who didn't want to retool.

But the biggest issue seems to be the Mint's desire to make a profit rather than serve the currency needs. They seem determined to make coins that people will collect or hoard rather than spend. Besides the 1$, they've remade nearly every coin in collectible versions with Presidents or States.

The 1$ coin could work if they'd just commit. Stop making the 1$ bill and flood the market with coins. The reason no one uses the 1$ coin is because no one uses the 1$ coin. I know that's recursive but it is the problem. If everyone got them as change, they'd spend them. If they start spending them, shops will give them out in change. As it is, if someone gets one, they set it aside on they're dresser at night and if a store gets them, they put them under the till. Many tills don't have 5 slots for coins, or if they do, they use the 5th for something else.

As it is, I might get one 1$ coin a year in change. Where are they all going?


Oh, and for all those folks that argue that they don't want pockets full of coins, if they're anywhere near my age, they grew up with quarters that were worth more than the dollars today, so that's no excuse.

I've never seen a dollar coin in circulation. A few months ago I got another coin in my change I'd never seen until then - a 50c coin. I had no idea those even existed.

When I first got to Austin the bus fare was 25c (and you could get a transfer that lasted 90 minutes), so paying your fare meant dropping one coin into the slot. Five or six years ago Cap Metro suddenly realised that they hadn't raised the bus fare for... I don't know how long, and Something Had To Be Done. Since then, transfers have gone away and the price has steadily increased so that now it's $1.25, and $2.50 for a day pass that lasts 24 hours from the moment it's printed.

If there are more than a couple of people getting on and buying a pass, whether it's with coins or notes, you can easily be there for five minutes waiting for them to get the bills into the reader or drop a half hundredweight of silver into the slot

I've never ridden a bus here. I would be one of those people who would infuriate you. I thought about trying to use Houston Metro's Park & Ride a few decades ago when I was working in Houston, but I just couldn't navigate the transfers I'd need. So, I gave up.

I'm sure it's not that difficult, but I have zero experience so even a small learning curve seems daunting.

Even when I was in the UK last year, the only bus I took was the shuttle from downtown Edinburgh to the airport, no navigation or transfers.

When I went to England in '85, I had no problem navigating the Underground. I might have even taken a bus, but maybe not.

I did get a board game called Scotland Yard that is set in London and gameplay mainly consists of navigating the Tube, Buses and Taxis. That's probably as close as I came to using a bus in London.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland_Yard_(board_game)

blimey your buses sound awful, Gosho.

I had an awful driver yesterday. We have contact cards for tickets (well, most people) you have to hold it on the machine and wait for the bleep/greenlight to show it's valid.

Sometimes when it's raining the driver will just chivvy everyone on so they don't get wet, you just show him you have a card. That's cute.
All the buses dip, every time the doors open. There is plenty of wheelchair and pram (and bike) space, and it works well. As an aside: if you're on your own with a pram, or are a wheelchair user, the driver is obliged to help you on and off the bus. I like that.

yesterday the driver was shouting at everyone for trying to do the right thing and hold their contact card at the machine. he was really rude, to some of the less - shall we say - german looking passengers. Then he shouted at an old lady who took too long to get off (she had started out standing up but she fell over and some young Turkish guys helped her sit down and got her stuff together for her). so then he moaned at them for getting off with her so she could manage the step, then getting on again at the exit instead of walking to the front (he would have driven off, I just know it)

Then when we got to the end stop, which is a turnaround, usually they moan if you try to get off the front, because the next lot of passengers are getting on there. But he really shouted at two (again, not German "looking") kids who were trying to get on because it was really raining.

At that point I took a photo of his ID number and then he started grumbling at me...

I might even have a hard time negotiating the buses and tubes in London these days I hear that you can no longer use cash on London buses any more. What the bloody buggery loblocks? And if they think I'm going to give them the satisfaction of collecting data about my movements through an Oyster Card they can jolly well go and piss up a stick

Oyster cards are fab though. And if you think about it, if they gather information about journeys, they can deploy their resources better.

They know where you are anyway...

So, just go with the flow.

I hope you do something with that picture, Sho, like reporting him to the company. What a toerag

Drivers here are forbidden from helping anyone on or off the bus, even someone in a wheelchair. Liability, naturally This is the land of the lawsuit after all.

It annoys me numerously to have the front of the bus dropped for me when I'm getting on (and confuses the hell out of me when I'm getting off at the back doors).

For a century buses have been designed to be a comfortable height to step onto or off, for most people. This mechanism where the front (or even the entire side) of the bus can be lowered was originally intended for people who have difficulty getting on and off the bus, for whatever reason. I'm not one of them (yet).

The way I see it is that it's another part of this modern nannying over-zealous customer service ethos that pervades society now. Everything has to be done for everyone, even if they can quite easily do it for themselves. It takes personal responsibility away from individuals. Like one of the gripes I mentioned above: As far as I'm concerned it's my responsibility to look for the bus, and when it comes (if it's a stop shared by more than one route) to make it known to the driver that I want to catch this bus. That's not how it works here. If there's anyone at the stop the driver *has* to pull in. That means people no longer see it as part of their job to look out for the bus. That responsibility has been shifted off them, so drivers will see someone at a stop, slow down, and (if they're on Planet Oblivion) honk their horn to get that person's attention.

No It's your business to watch for the bus.

Also, it's a piece of mechanical equipment. From the moment it's made and installed it has a finite number of operations in it. The more it's used the sooner it's going to wear out, break down and need fixing or replacing. I've no doubt it's a very expensive thing to repair or replace, so why use it indiscriminately? I've had direct experience of this. On a bus journey home, after a seventeen-hour shift, with no sleep for 36 hours, and all I wanted to do was get home. The bus-dropping mechanism failed and the entire side of the bus leaned over. We all thought it was a flat tyre at first. Had to wait 30 minutes for the next bus to come along

But mostly, I just don't like being nannied If I've just walked all the way from the back of the bus to the front, while the bus is moving, does anyone really think I'm going to need the front of the bus lowered so that I can get off?

You are in the "Land of the lawsuit" but we are coming up on the rail.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-24214346
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/dec/08/bus-parents-buggies-wheelchair-users-appeal-first-group
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-33444455

Watch this space...

And as for Oyster cards, you can now also use any NFC enabled debit or credit cards as well.
Good news... it has got rid of standing behind the idiot who doesn't sort their change out before getting on the bus.
Bad news...
We now stand behind the idiot with their card buried in the bottom of the briefcase or handbag.

Can't win either way

I still use an Oyster card (we don't have those fancy cash/credit/debit cards in Germany - they're still grappling with the credit card). I don't think it is actually attached to my name, though. So no one can follow where I am going - just where the card is going....

Well, the person who I thought was going to be fired and wasn't, just got fired.

Congratulations?


Let's do the Schadenfreude Polka.

(Damn, I wish I could find this clip from _Pinky and the Brain_, but Warner Bros. nuked it from orbit for copyright infringement. It's from their "Broadway Malady" episode. All I can find is this snippet of lyrics on IMDb:

>>Singers: It's the Schadenfreude Polka / The Schadenfreude Polka!
>>The Brain: When they fall upon the ground / You just laugh and >>dance around.
>>The Brain, Singers: Dance the Schadenfreude Polka!)

A few Stories of the Bus from the weekend to entertain you.

On Saturday morning I got the first of my two buses to work at 7.30am. Half way into the journey the driver was approaching a stop where there were two blokes sitting on the bench, blithely unaware of the huge vehicle, so he honked the horn, surprising them both somewhat, I thought, bearing in mind the bus is why they were there.

One stood up and walked across to where the bus had now stopped and started to get on. The other... well, we had to wait for him to put his shoes on, stand up and hitch up his shorts (more longs really) which were hanging off his bum, pick up several items off the floor which had fallen through the slats in the bench, and then get on the bus, whereupon he started hunting for his bus pass, which was an item he'd somehow missed when picking up all the other stuff on the floor, so, off the bus, grab it, back on the bus and swipe it through the reader. Which naturally rejects it, probably because it hasn't been well looked after and the magnetic strip is unreadable, whereupon he does that thing I see everyone whose pass is rejected do nowadays - shove it under the nose of the driver to read the printed expiry date/time. Having held us all up for around three minutes with this rigmarole he ambles his sweet way to the back of the bus to join his friend and we're under way again. Good job I have a 12-minute wait for my second bus.

I got off the bus at the stop where I make my connection, the driver having unnecessarily dropped the front of the bus for me (because I was getting off at the back doors). As I was walking over to the other stop I first heard the beep-beep-beep of the bus being raised and the sound of the doors closing, and then the beep-beep-beep of the bus being lowered again and the doors opening because our two friends had now decided that this is their stop and they'd quite like to get off.

To cut a long story short they were getting a bus travelling in the opposite direction to the bus I was catching and were at a stop across the road from me. When their bus arrived exactly the same scene of getting on it played out

On Sunday morning, again first bus, we get to a stop where there are three people waiting. Two get on, the third seems reluctant to go ahead of the other two. The reason, it turns out, is that he's got to try and persuade the driver to let him on the bus without paying. I couldn't hear the conversation from where I was sitting so I don't know how he came to have no pass or money but it was plain from his gestures and his facial expressions that he fully expected to get on even though the driver was at first against it. He eventually got his free ride though.

On the way home on Sunday (first bus), we approached a stop with another bloke sitting on the bench, again utterly oblivious of the large piece of public transport machinery bearing down upon him. Another honked horn, another reaction of surprise.

He had several bags with him, including a backpack which he seemed not to understand is something you put on your back, and it took him several moments to gather these all together and get on the bus. He did another of those things I see people do nowadays on the bus - people who have a lot of stuff to carry**. He walked past the driver without paying, put all his bags on a seat (except for the backpack which he's now figured out, but which is leaking water), then walked back to the front of the bus to begin searching for his pass.

Which he eventually finds, but the driver points out that there's liquid coming out of his backpack, so he struggles to take it off again and puts it down on a seat. Not his seat of course, another seat which someone is going to sit down on and get a wet bum. Meanwhile the driver has pulled away, so at the next stop, having extricated the leaking bottle of water from his bag he gets off the bus, drops the bottle in a litter bin, gets back on and, finally, settles himself down into his seat.

Good thing I have another ten-minute wait for my second bus.

None of this is unusual, by the way. It's a daily occurrence.

On the way home tonight... there's a particular bus stop on my first bus which always results in a delay. It's at a busy junction with three buses going in one direction and two in the other, so the bus company have peppered the junction with benches and shelters. That can have only one result in this town - it's a hangout for the aforementioned crackheads, crazies, drunks etc. Even though there may be only one person at the actual stop, or no-one at all but there are people getting off the bus, as soon as the doors open people appear apparently from nowhere, although they've probably just ambled across from one of the shelters/benches. Why they couldn't have done that while they saw the bus waiting at the red light on the other side of the junction... well, who knows.

The other thing about this stop is that almost always someone running for the bus just after the last person has got on and the driver is getting ready to pull away, so we have to wait for them to get on, find their pass and run it through the machine, which almost always rejects it (see above). In the time it takes for that to happen, someone else is running for the bus and... repeat, rinse, repeat.

Today was especially interesting in that one person got on the bus, sat down, and then decided to get off again, while another got off, disappeared from view, then reappeared and got on again, walking straight past the driver without any thought of paying a fare, as if the driver ought to know he'd already been on the bus.

The next stop after this one is the stop outside the bus company's depot. Today I was on the bus... well, let's look in on a planning meeting inside the depot some time ago.

"Well guys, it's time we came up with something new to make the service even more annoying than it already is. We have some pretty low standards already so you're going to have to dig deep for this one. Anyone?"
"Er, I have an idea."
"Go on, Clark."
"Well, how about if we change drivers in the middle of the rush hour when everyone's trying to get home and make connections?"
"Yes, I like where you're going with this."
"Oh, there's more. Instead of having the relief driver at the stop when the bus pulls up, we have them wait inside the depot so they have to come out. I reckon it could hold the bus up for a good five minutes."
"Brilliant! This is just the sort of thing we're looking for. Have a cigar. Oh, and kudos to Bill for coming up with the algorithm that went through the schedule of every bus on the service and timed them so that wherever possible the connection times between buses were either wafer-thin or entirely non-existent."

**It's not only people with a lot to carry who do this. Some people simply do it as a matter of course. Some seem to forget entirely that they have to pay a fare to ride a bus. Some do it because they have to turn their bag inside out to find their pass (and very often don't, so get a free ride). And then there was the woman who was in the middle of a phone conversation that must have been far too important for any distractions such as paying her fare, until that is, she hung up five stops down the road, got her pass out of her bag, swiped it, and promptly got off at the next stop.

And the driver almost never asks the passenger if they have a pass or money to pay their fare. I can't help wondering how much cheaper my fare would be if it weren't for all the people who get a free ride for any one of several reasons.