Steel Reserve – H20 edition
I was on the 50 this morning going to St. Paul. It’s a quiet bus and our driver is pretty awesome. 2 women and 3 kids get on–2 kids looked about 13, one about 5 or 6. They all had suitcases & had the look you get when you’ve just gotten back from vacation–’get me home now’.
We get to Midway & the oldest woman pulls out a bottle of Steel Reserve wrapped in a paper bag (I could see the label). Normally, I wouldn’t say anything, but there was a 5 year old there. I went and told the bus driver and she watched the woman. When she started to drink, the driver told her she couldn’t and if the bottle had alcohol in it, she’d have to get off the bus.
The woman’s excuse? It didn’t have beer in it, it had water.
I didn’t see what happened next; my stop was up.
I’m wondering, though–should I have told the bus driver at all or just let the woman go on with her business?
Jul 12th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
No, you shouldn’t have let it go. This one was trying to hide her drinking. The next one will just pull the bottle out in front of everyone. A line has to be drawn. There are two points that should be made. First, from the front of the bus the driver often can’t tell what’s going on back there. If some one, for instance, is playing loud music it is often impossible to tell who it is. If passengers don’t want to be subjected to this noise they need to take the initiative and let the driver know who it is. Second, Metro Transit management has hamstrung drivers when it comes to keeping order on the bus. Drivers aren’t supposed to do anything except warn a misbehaving passenger once. The only reason there is not chaos and bloodshed on the buses is that certain drivers have drawn that line I mentioned and won’t stand for bad behavior. First, however, they must know about the bad behavior in order to put a stop to it. So, yes, you were right to tell the driver.
Oct 5th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
No, you shouldn’t have let it go. This one was trying to hide her drinking. The next one will just pull the bottle out in front of everyone. A line has to be drawn. There are two points that should be made. First, from the front of the bus the driver often can’t tell what’s going on back there. If some one, for instance, is playing loud music it is often impossible to tell who it is. If passengers don’t want to be subjected to this noise they need to take the initiative and let the driver know who it is. Second, Metro Transit management has hamstrung drivers when it comes to keeping order on the bus. Drivers aren’t supposed to do anything except warn a misbehaving passenger once. The only reason there is not chaos and bloodshed on the buses is that certain drivers have drawn that line I mentioned and won’t stand for bad behavior. First, however, they must know about the bad behavior in order to put a stop to it. So, yes, you were right to tell the driver.