A bus driver's lot is not a happy lot.
Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 2:03 pm
If you want to see how vile we are becoming, take a bus ride
By Tom Utley
(Filed: 10/02/2006)
I have seen my fellow men and women in a new perspective since my wife became a bus driver 18 months ago. From her viewpoint, behind the wheel of a London double-decker, they are often an ugly sight.
She counts herself lucky if she manages to get through a whole day without being called a bitch, or something much worse, by one or more of her passengers - usually for no better reason than that she has been held up in the traffic.
I am still shocked by her reports of the unspeakable rudeness that she has to endure as she drives her bus through the centre of town, from West Norwood in the south to Baker Street in the north, and back. All human life is on that route, from the crack houses of Brixton to the five-star hotels of Park Lane. It seems to occur to very few people, rich or poor, that the driver behind the wheel may be a human being, with ordinary human feelings.
But she is a tough cookie, my wife - hardened, no doubt, by two-and-a-half decades spent looking after selfish Utley men and boys - and generally she has no difficulty in abiding by her employers' policy of letting all the abuse wash over her. Just occasionally, however, she succumbs to the temptation to give as good as she gets.
The other day, for example, a peroxide blonde in a fancy new BMW opened her window and subjected my wife to a torrent of four-letter words, unrepeatable in print. My Lucinda's offence, apparently, had been to stop at a bus stop, thereby impeding the BMW's progress.
As it happened, she had with her a copy of Lynne Truss's latest book about the state of modern manners, which she had brought to work to read in her break. She picked it up and, with a beatific smile, showed the front cover to the foul-mouthed woman in the BMW - Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life. Game, set and match, I reckon, to Mrs U.
It is a wonder to me that people pick on London bus drivers in this way, and feel that it doesn't really matter what they say to them. Perhaps it has something to do with the Englishman's instinctive (and sometimes healthy) hostility to people in uniform. But I suspect that it has more to do with that human urge to kick the cat when things are going badly.
No doubt a lot of the people who call my wife a "f------ c---" have had a bad day at work, and would really prefer to address their insults to their bosses. They vent their anger instead on the bus driver, because that is so much safer. It is always comforting to feel that there are people even lower down the food chain than we are.
But, whatever the reason or the excuse might be, it is horrible that there are so many Britons around who think so little about showering abuse on strangers. According to my wife, schoolchildren are among the worst offenders, which does not bode well for the future. I just wish I knew what could be done about it.
One answer, I suppose, is to write books like Truss's - or columns like this one - lamenting the decline in standards of manners. But the sort of people who read these books or columns would never dream of addressing the C-word to a bus driver (or, if we dreamt of it, we would certainly keep our dreams to ourselves).
Nor can I believe that pressure groups such as the Polite Society or its offshoot, the Campaign for Courtesy, do any good. I cannot so much as read the names of these organisations without hearing the prissy, irritating voice of a nanny saying: "Now, what do you say? There! That wasn't so difficult, was it?"
Every time a spokesman for the Polite Society (the "Polate Socaity", as I cannot help thinking of it) issues a statement about the evils of swearing, I feel a guilty twinge of schoolboy sympathy with the wag who writes to the weblog, instructing him to "f--- off". But I do not believe that the cause of courtesy is entirely lost. For one thing, good manners are quite as infectious as bad. A colleague who lives in Brighton tells me that it is standard practice
there for passengers to thank the bus driver at the end of their journey. If only a few dozen people in London were to start behaving like that, the idea might catch on that "thank you" is quite as conventional a thing to say to a bus driver as "you f------ bitch".
I am encouraged, too, by a development at my local Sainsbury's. Not so long ago, the checkout girls would never address a word to their customers, except to demand payment and ask if we wanted "cashback". But lately they have started greeting every customer with a "good afternoon, sir", or a "how are you today, madam?"
Now, I am not stupid enough to believe that the checkout girls at Sainsbury's have suddenly developed an interest in their customers' wellbeing, or care whether we have a good afternoon or not. An edict has clearly gone out, instructing them that they must put on a show of civility, in the way
that Americans are instructed to tell their customers to "have a nice day".
But the funny thing is that the pretence works. It really does make the miseries of the supermarket more endurable when the staff are polite - even when we all know perfectly well that they are acting under orders. The manager of my local Sainsbury's has clocked on to the fact that there is money in good manners - and where money leads, trends follow.
It might have sounded at the beginning as if a London bus driver's working life was one long torment of abuse. But of course there are some lovely people around, as well as swine. The other day, my wife was treated to a more than usually virulent verbal attack from a young woman, who stood beside her for several stops, screaming F-words at her.
She took it all with her usual stoicism. But when at last her tormentor got off, an elderly woman who had overheard it all came up to my wife and said: "You poor thing. Are you all right, dear?" Only then did my wife have to fight back the tears. It is just so bloody nice to feel that there is somebody on your side.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006.
By Tom Utley
(Filed: 10/02/2006)
I have seen my fellow men and women in a new perspective since my wife became a bus driver 18 months ago. From her viewpoint, behind the wheel of a London double-decker, they are often an ugly sight.
She counts herself lucky if she manages to get through a whole day without being called a bitch, or something much worse, by one or more of her passengers - usually for no better reason than that she has been held up in the traffic.
I am still shocked by her reports of the unspeakable rudeness that she has to endure as she drives her bus through the centre of town, from West Norwood in the south to Baker Street in the north, and back. All human life is on that route, from the crack houses of Brixton to the five-star hotels of Park Lane. It seems to occur to very few people, rich or poor, that the driver behind the wheel may be a human being, with ordinary human feelings.
But she is a tough cookie, my wife - hardened, no doubt, by two-and-a-half decades spent looking after selfish Utley men and boys - and generally she has no difficulty in abiding by her employers' policy of letting all the abuse wash over her. Just occasionally, however, she succumbs to the temptation to give as good as she gets.
The other day, for example, a peroxide blonde in a fancy new BMW opened her window and subjected my wife to a torrent of four-letter words, unrepeatable in print. My Lucinda's offence, apparently, had been to stop at a bus stop, thereby impeding the BMW's progress.
As it happened, she had with her a copy of Lynne Truss's latest book about the state of modern manners, which she had brought to work to read in her break. She picked it up and, with a beatific smile, showed the front cover to the foul-mouthed woman in the BMW - Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life. Game, set and match, I reckon, to Mrs U.
It is a wonder to me that people pick on London bus drivers in this way, and feel that it doesn't really matter what they say to them. Perhaps it has something to do with the Englishman's instinctive (and sometimes healthy) hostility to people in uniform. But I suspect that it has more to do with that human urge to kick the cat when things are going badly.
No doubt a lot of the people who call my wife a "f------ c---" have had a bad day at work, and would really prefer to address their insults to their bosses. They vent their anger instead on the bus driver, because that is so much safer. It is always comforting to feel that there are people even lower down the food chain than we are.
But, whatever the reason or the excuse might be, it is horrible that there are so many Britons around who think so little about showering abuse on strangers. According to my wife, schoolchildren are among the worst offenders, which does not bode well for the future. I just wish I knew what could be done about it.
One answer, I suppose, is to write books like Truss's - or columns like this one - lamenting the decline in standards of manners. But the sort of people who read these books or columns would never dream of addressing the C-word to a bus driver (or, if we dreamt of it, we would certainly keep our dreams to ourselves).
Nor can I believe that pressure groups such as the Polite Society or its offshoot, the Campaign for Courtesy, do any good. I cannot so much as read the names of these organisations without hearing the prissy, irritating voice of a nanny saying: "Now, what do you say? There! That wasn't so difficult, was it?"
Every time a spokesman for the Polite Society (the "Polate Socaity", as I cannot help thinking of it) issues a statement about the evils of swearing, I feel a guilty twinge of schoolboy sympathy with the wag who writes to the weblog, instructing him to "f--- off". But I do not believe that the cause of courtesy is entirely lost. For one thing, good manners are quite as infectious as bad. A colleague who lives in Brighton tells me that it is standard practice
there for passengers to thank the bus driver at the end of their journey. If only a few dozen people in London were to start behaving like that, the idea might catch on that "thank you" is quite as conventional a thing to say to a bus driver as "you f------ bitch".
I am encouraged, too, by a development at my local Sainsbury's. Not so long ago, the checkout girls would never address a word to their customers, except to demand payment and ask if we wanted "cashback". But lately they have started greeting every customer with a "good afternoon, sir", or a "how are you today, madam?"
Now, I am not stupid enough to believe that the checkout girls at Sainsbury's have suddenly developed an interest in their customers' wellbeing, or care whether we have a good afternoon or not. An edict has clearly gone out, instructing them that they must put on a show of civility, in the way
that Americans are instructed to tell their customers to "have a nice day".
But the funny thing is that the pretence works. It really does make the miseries of the supermarket more endurable when the staff are polite - even when we all know perfectly well that they are acting under orders. The manager of my local Sainsbury's has clocked on to the fact that there is money in good manners - and where money leads, trends follow.
It might have sounded at the beginning as if a London bus driver's working life was one long torment of abuse. But of course there are some lovely people around, as well as swine. The other day, my wife was treated to a more than usually virulent verbal attack from a young woman, who stood beside her for several stops, screaming F-words at her.
She took it all with her usual stoicism. But when at last her tormentor got off, an elderly woman who had overheard it all came up to my wife and said: "You poor thing. Are you all right, dear?" Only then did my wife have to fight back the tears. It is just so bloody nice to feel that there is somebody on your side.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006.
