What’s your worst bus driver story? This one sounds about standard for BÉ
Today I was a victim of a targeted attack of harassment and embarrassment by a Bus Éireann driver, that has seemingly, for this man pictured here, been in the works for almost a month
— ✧Gemma✧ (@MicroGem) August 10, 2022
34 comments
Used to have a driver on the 18 who would ask me every single day where I was going because I only needed to pay minimum fare at the time. I was going to college.
He didn’t care if there was a queue of people in front or behind me. He would give me shit every time. I would tell him everyday u ask me this everyday and it’s the same answer everyday.
One of my lectures even gave the bus driver shit because he noticed he’d give me shit every time.
One day as I was getting off I threw my ticket at him and he told me he was going to make a citizen’s arrest.
One other time I saw the bus and had to run to the stop. I made it to the stop before the bus did and he changed the number on the bus from 18 to live tour, he didn’t stop at my stop and stopped at the next one down the road.
After that I rang Dublin bus and never saw him again.
Years ago, a bus driver tried over charging me, he thought I wasn’t a local. I lost my shit, we got into a massive argument, that I won.Fast forward to now, our sons have been in the same class since junior infants and we live down the road from each other. His wife is lovely, he is still an asshole.
Jesus that poor woman
That twitter thread is absolutely insane. Imagine carrying on like that, what an unbelievable asshole. I would be generally slow to make comments like this but the guy needs to be sacked immediately.
I posted this before here.
I was finishing work in Heineken in Cork at Xmas and they gave us a slab of cans for Xmas, grand I said off to the bus station I go to get the bus home. As I get on the bus the driver tells me no drinking on the bus and I explain I’m just finished work going to store the slab over my head if it fits and if not, under my feet. He’s not having it and tells me, underneath or nothing as it’s to big. Grand…. I put it under and next minute he leaves a lad on with a bloody chello, I ask why he’s allowed bring that on concidering the size of it and he barks “because he’s not going to bloodly drink it”
At this stage I’m a little bit more then irate. I get to my stop and the slab is slid all the way to the back and I have to climb into get it and the twat closes the door, trapping me inside.
I kicked the shite out of the door until the bus stopped, he driver gets out and starts shouting that if I hadn’t of been drunk I wouldn’t of gotten stuck.
I don’t think he realised how close he was to getting a kick up the hole.
Two weeks later I get a call from the depot apologising saying he was under a lot of pressure. Bollox, he was a prick of a driver and I seen him plenty of times been a prick to teenagers and women when he could get away with it and I wasn’t long telling them that.
Little poisoned dwaft of a man.
There’s some absolute fucking wagon that used to drive the 123 for Dublin Bus, probably still does. She will mentally track the fare you paid down to the final cent and give you a complete bollocking if you’re even one stop over the fare you paid. An absolute weapon of a woman and I’m fucking delighted I haven’t seen her in years.
I was visiting friends in Cavan when I got a phone call that my Granda had taken a bad turn so I had to come home.
So I hopped on the 30 bus (which was how I got there in the first place and which I used all the time to get to college) and expected all to go as normal.
The first sign that something was wrong was that we ended up in Clones. For those who don’t know, the 30 goes Cavan-Belturbet-Enniskillen and onto Donegal. It doesn’t go next nor near Monaghan at any point on the route (the 32 does). So already we were like “WTF?” We had to backtrack to Cavan so we would pass all the right stops.
The second thing was when the bus driver just stopped the bus dead in the middle of the road and said “Does anybody know where we are?”
If I hadn’t been panicking about getting home to Granda I think I would have laughed, it was so absurd.
I don’t know if it’s still the case, but back then the 30 used to link up with a local bus in Ballyshannon which would being people onto Bundoran and out that direction. Because we were so late, we had to detour to Bundoran as well.
And because we had also missed the local bus that went to west Donegal (which I needed to get), I had to get someone to drive an hour round trip to come and get me.
I made a complaint and they said the driver was a subcontractor and this wouldn’t usually happen, but it still think it’s unacceptable that they’d put someone on a route without even knowing the stops.
They’re turning into cunts. A fat prick literally tried to turn his bus into me yesterday near Christchurch. Wankers think they own the fucking road.
A few years ago friend of mine took a video of a Cork City bus Éireann driver with both elbows on the wheel, using his phone with both hands, full speed down a very narrow street. My friend is very non confrontational so she said nothing to him directly, and knowing full well their complaints form goes nowhere, with her blessing I tweeted it at them, but it went a little bit locally viral when a radio station ended up reposting it to Facebook, and several of the people replying to defend the driver were all clearly drivers themselves and being absolute thugs about it, demonstrating how completely untouchable and corrupt their union is.
I don’t expect the guy in the OP thread to get any meaningful discipline, considering according to one of the replies it looks like he may be an ex taxi driver with a Google-able history of abuse and they still hired him.
I’ve been told I needed the exact change for a €1.90 bus ticket when trying to pay with a €2 coin.
Was at a bus stop one time on a bit of a bend, so you don’t really see the bus come round until quite late. I was also on crutches with my leg in a cast.
Anyway, bus comes around fast and I just about get a hand up to hail it – your man manages to get the thing stopped maybe 20 foot ahead of the bus stop and I hobble my way towards it. As I get on the driver just roars at me “Do you think I have all day? I stopped for you so you better fucking run to get on rather than wasting my time” while I’m standing there with crutches and a cast…. I just laughed and called him an angry prick.
A few years ago I dropped my kid off at the side of the road just in front of but not on a bus stop. This is in a busy high street avenue. Bus pulls up and driver starts calling me a cunt. As I’m already out of the car I go over to the bus. The driver is still calling me names. I put one foot on the bus entrance and drivers asks me to try hit him so he can get out of the cab and deal with me. I tell him to wise up so he closes the door on me with one foot on the bus and starts to drive off. I’m hanging on and he only stops when another passenger screams at him. Door opens and he tells me he’ll knock my fuck in. Thing is the bus has cameras both inside and out with full sound. So I call the police who interview him and caution him. Bus company tell me he has been severely reprimanded. Nuts. Thing is he was in his sixties, small bald and overweight. Must have caught him on a bad day
Knowing the unions, this man is probably unfireable and has deleted any CCTV on the bus. This is such a symbol of our country.. middle aged fuckers getting paid a fortune to not only ruin our public services, but now be menaces to our citizens in the course of destroying our public assets and services.
Hope he gets all that’s coming to him. I don’t think I can write it all down, but being fired isn’t enough.
THE RAMP IS MY BUISNESS NOT YOURS!
First time ever arriving in Manchester UK, got off the train, stepped onto the shuttle bus and was loudly told to F**K OFF by the bus driver for getting straight rather than waiting for him to drive 10 metres to the bus stop, even though it made no difference.
Pretty funny to have the Manc stereotype confirmed within 5 minutes of arriving. I was in the UK for a long work trip in Crewe (which is basically 28 days later ALL THE TIME) so just wanted to visit somewhere on the weekend rather than staying in that soul vacuum. Not a bad city, great technology museum, but I couldn’t help think I probably should have gone to Liverpool instead. 😆
Was running for a Dublin Bus at a stop on Pearse Street, I made it just as the doors closed and the driver turned the indicator on. Ordinarily I’d acknowledge it was a lost cause, but the traffic was at a bumper-to-bumper standstill for as far ahead as I could see. So I knock on the door, and the driver turns to look at me then turns back to look straight ahead. I knock again and he doesnt look at me.
So out of spite I wait at the stop for a total of six (6!) minutes with the bus not moving out of the stop. I knocked once more after three minutes and same response.
Then traffic finally starts moving and the bus finally pulls out of the stop, only now the traffic lights immediately after the stop turns red and the bus is first in line at them. I walk across the road in front of it and wave at the driver, and when he sees it’s me he turns his head to the side to avoid looking at me.
Not as terrible a story as some posted here but it stuck with me how much of a stubborn cunt he was.
I’ve had a Free Travel Pass from the age of 15 and believe me, they thought I was the scum of the earth whenever I used it. I’ve had drivers refuse to let me on, confiscate my pass, try to call various offices to try verify if it was real or they’d berate me with accusations of it being stolen. Worst times was when they either wouldn’t give it back or let me on until I “show them my disability.” In my case it’s only a few scars on my torso but its still fucked they used to try make me do that.
It really didn’t help that the girlfriend I had through my teens also had a pass for a different disability. Whenever the two of us turned up with passes it was a complete shitshow most of the time. God forbid a third teen friend turn up with one, as would happen from time to time.
The new ones with the picture ID that work like a Leap Card get rid of most of the issues around ownership and usage, but like, you can be disabled at any age y’know. As a teen I let too much slide out of fear and only ever reported one driver for abuse, as an adult I would have reported every instance.
Ironically, I’ve met loads of adults and older people on public transport that admitted to me they were using their child/relatives pass or that they outright stole them from somewhere.
You’re obviously less likely to get or no shit from a driver about the pass if you’re an adult who can go to-to-toe with them. But if you’re a teen, especially a disabled one, you’re genuinely viewed as easy pickings for an arsehole bus driver with a superiority complex to bully you. And the last thing you want as a teen just out trying to socialise is to cause trouble, get left stranded or have your pass taken away so you generally just have to lie down and take I as there’s little to no recourse for you whatsoever.
Many moons ago a bus driver refused to let my on the bus with my student ticket as my student card didn’t have an expiry date. This was at a switch over point, I’d used half the ticket at this point.
Can I go against the theme just to say vast majority of my experiences with bus drivers are positive and some are truly great.
I’m not originally Irish but I have been living here for over 20 years and I was blown by the level of friendliness of bus drivers when I moved here. All countries could do with more of our Irish bus drivers.
The worst story though was many years ago when I was running in the rain on a miserable evening to catch the last bus and he closed the door in front of me and pulled out… I had to get taxi home and it wasn’t cheap. Ate into a budget of a poor student back then.
The best though was recently when I got a bus in the west to literally middle of nowhere after 10pm. There was just me on the bus and the trip was almost an hour long, we chatted about everything and anything all journey and he offered to drop me anywhere that was the most convenient for me instead at one of designated bus stops
When he stopped to drop me off, he was concerned nobody was waiting for me (I told him my husband is picking me up after we agreed on location on google maps and I send him a pin) and insisted to wait until my husband arrives so I’m not standing on my own in the darkness with nothing around. Fortunately just as he said that I could see the lights of the van pulling out from the small road and it was my ride to the camping spot.
My local bus is a once weekly rural transport bus. One week, I must have looked at the clock wrong, because I left the house to catch it around 20 minutes early. I hadn’t even reached the end of the road when it drove past, and I had to flag it down.
I told the driver that he was very early, he sarcastically said he clearly wasn’t because I would’ve missed the bus if he was. I pointed out that the other 10-15 regular passengers must have all missed it, because the bus was empty. He shouted at me to sit down and shut up.
While waiting for the bus home, I met two of the other regular passengers, both frail pensioners. Both had seen the bus pass their houses over half an hour early. One was in severe pain after walking two miles to catch another bus as she had no other way to get food. Another had spent nearly €50 on a taxi as she had an appointment in the hospital she couldn’t miss.
As we waited on the bus back home for it to leave, the other passengers complained to the driver. He said he ran perfectly on time and that we should all buy new watches as ours were clearly faulty. They told him to stop talking nonsense, he responded by telling us all to get off the bus because he wasn’t willing to carry “abusive passengers”, shutting the door and driving off with an empty bus in the wrong direction, leaving the three of us standing there to make our own way home.
One of my BE drivers hopped off the bus to use the ATM on the way into Dublin one time. Yeah no problem pal, take your time.
I’m loving that her thread has gone viral and she got a pic. The amount of shite bus drivers used to spout back in my bus days and they were untouchable. You knew if you complained to bus eireann, it was thrown in the bin. Going viral on Twitter is way better.
Literally on my way to work this morning, get to the bus stop and a guy tells me the last two 18s haven’t shown up. This one does and although we have our arms out he doesn’t stop. He the pulls up about 50m down the road from the stop so we all walk down. He lets people off but doesn’t open the front doors despite the fact that we are standing right there. Then he drives away. Needless to say I was late for work.
79s in general man they either show up or dont and alot of busses that are on real time just dissappear when the time says due.. like if your timetable and real time say my bus is ment to be here at least show up and then when you bring it to the driver that eventually shiws up hea just like thats not my problem
I was on Bus Eireann a few years back, heading from Galway city to Loughrea. We hit out on the motorway, got off on the first exit, took a scenic route back to Galway and then onto the old Dublin road.
When exiting the bus in Loughrea I told the driver it was an interesting route he took. “We all get feckin lost sometimes” was the reply, which is true to be fair. The bunch of American tourists on board heading to the airport didn’t seem too impressed though.
There was this absolute arsehole of a driver who used to drive the bus I took to school every day in first year. Absolute power-tripping prick who felt like a big man picking on little girls in their school uniforms. He would always have smart-arse comment to make to us. He used to give out to me for putting my hand out to stop the bus, and then he’d give out when I didn’t. He tried to charge me extra for bringing my PE or Home Ec bag on the bus.
The worst was when we had a non-uniform day one day in the middle of winter and he wouldn’t let me pay a schoolchild fare. I said I was thirteen and on my way to school but we had a non-uniform day and he said he’d have to see my birth certificate to prove my age. A woman offered to pay for me because I didn’t have enough, and he wouldn’t let her. Then he threw me off the bus. I had no idea when the next bus would be (pre-smartphone days) and I didn’t want to be late so I had to walk along an isolated road in the pitch black by myself. Female joggers and pedestrians have been attacked along that road in the early mornings and I know he would have known that. I was bawling my eyes out and absolutely inconsolable by the time I got to school, where I got given out to for being late.
I was so young and impressionable that it scared me off using buses and I didn’t for years after that. I still have a sick feeling in my stomach even thinking about it, as silly as it sounds saying that at my age.
Before reading: “ah it can’t be THAT bad”
After reading: “I want to find this man and punish him”
Woah.
Also… this was fantastic “make the bus go tsss tsss tsss and lower it to let me get the pram off safely”
Perfectly described.
I’ve used Bus Eireann in my youth, but all I can remember from them is being given shit, by a BE Supervisor for loading my bike (with ticket) into the belly of a large bus in Busaras for a trip west. He explained his though process: *when* (not if) *the bus breaks down, they will send out a low school bus to rescue everyone and there’s no room for a bike on those so it’ll make their jobs more difficult*.
I stopped using them after that – imagine giving out to your customers for having to do the basic minimum of your job?
Told the driver where I wanted to get to when I got on and paid. Bus driver kept insisting that there wasn’t a stop where I wanted to get off. I kept insisting it was there and it doesn’t matter if he had never stopped there before. We get close and he’s swearing up and down there’s no stop. Eventually got him to stop (and he stopped suddenly before the stop; in the middle of an exit of the dual carriageway, he shouted out to get the fuck off the bus and if he saw me again he wouldn’t let me on. I told him not to worry I wouldn’t be taking that bus again and that was that.
Obviously not as bad as other stories but it’s the same power tripping. I like to think he pulled away and then 5-10 seconds later saw the bus stop.
A few years ago a Bus Eireann driver gave my wife a load of shit because she was using her free travel pass because she still had her paper one and didn’t know about the PSC.
Dickhead told her if he saw her using it again he’d take it off her.
Note that this travel pass is for disability.
Got a 10pm bus from Dublin to Cavan on Christmas Eve.
Bus driver kicked me off the bus in Virginia cause it was past midnight and he doesn’t work on Christmas.
My siblings all had babies so couldn’t collect me and no Gardaí or taxis about, so I walked the main road back to Cavan just as the sun started to rise.
I was maybe walking an hour when I realized I left my luggage under the bus so I walked home with no presents for my nephews/nieces.
Worst Christmas ever
An old housemate of mine was a bus driver. He told me he refused to stop for people in wheelchairs and deliberately left them waiting at the bus stop simply because he didn’t want to put down the ramp. He was boasting about it, like it was something to be proud of. I actually never spoke to him again I was so disgusted.
I believe he became a train driver since then. I honestly think if someone jumped out in front of his train he’d actually enjoy the experience.
One of the most horrible people I’ve ever encountered in my life.
Card machine on an aircoach was broken and the driver refused to let two passengers pay when they got to Dublin airport as they could get cash out there. Told them they could go find and ATM and get the next one. Never mind that it says on the website that you can pay with card. Since when is it the passengers fault that your card machine was broken. Thankfully a someone else had cash for them and they could pay them back at the airport. The Bus driver all but told them to f off.
On a bus (and the only passenger at the time) from Cavan to Dublin, late night.
Just before Kells, the bus pulls to the side of the road, not at a stop but I figured the driver might need a whizz, so I carry on peering out the window with my earphones in.
Next thing I know the driver is right beside me, shouting that I had to get off the bus.
Confused I asked him why and he again shouted “no fucking smoking on the bus, now get off!”
I don’t smoke.
I wasn’t smoking.
He was certain that I had been but I asked him where the lingering smoke was (that would have filled an empty bus), where the ash or butt were.
“Well someone is smoking here”
When I pointed out that we were the only two people on the bus he slinked off back to the driver’s seat and we carried on.
I’ll never forget it, mental.