His “Earth Angel”
I’d started working at the university and decided to take the bus to ease my commute stress, and be nice to my pocketbook and the earth at the same time. A few of the people on the 760 knew each other and chatted a lot, but everyone got big grins and sincere “good morning!”s from our friendly driver.
Last Friday, he got on the microphone and announced the return of a woman, his “earth angel,” who had battled illness and was back to ride the bus again. A smiling, white-haired woman wearing a brilliant pink coat, stood and waved to everyone. Even though we only know each other for that 15-20 minutes every morning, everyone on the bus was smiling as they clapped for her.
Dec 1st, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Nice story, Amanda. Thanks for sharing. Wish all drivers were as nice as yours. (Of course, all drivers probably wish their passengers were as nice as your driver’s.)
Dec 6th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
You KNOW………………. There are a few of us out here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I in the 15 Yrs I,ve been here has any one thought I was nice enough to respond with a simple good morning and go out of my way to wait for reg. riders and to get the look of ( I,d like to spiut on you!) , Why is that?????????????????????????????????//
Feb 24th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Me, I think it’s all in how you go about it. I don’t know Diane as we are all anonymous to one another here, I only know how I go about my day to day. I enjoy my job, even after being spit on, called things I didn’t know existed, bben accused of using language to people that I didn’t even KNOW the words and would have been proud to have thought up, etc, etc. Becuase the good outweighs the bad. I have also had little guys come right around the farebox as they’re getting off with mom or dad, and say “bye, bus driver” and give me a big hug with their little arms around my middle. Color doesn’t matter!! Kids are great! THAT made it worth going to work that day. I remember another time a few years back, running an express in the morning and being 45 minutes late getting downtown because of the bad snow we were getting . I apologized as I hit downtown and got a lot of “thanks for driving”s, and “not a problem, not YOUR fault”s. That made me feel better, becasue I, like A LOT OF DRIVERS feel bad when we have a service failure. Next day it was still icy and I was ten minutes down. “Folks, this is Fourth and Hennepin. The bad news is we’re ten minutes late, but…..*sigh*…..we’re still thirty five minutes ahead of yesterday”. THAT got a laugh and veryone started their day on the right foot. We ain’t perfect, folks. But, some of us ARE trying. And we apologize for those who are not and wish for everyone’s sake they’d go find a job they like. “Thanks for riding with us, have a great day. This IS the last stop….the time is…..”