I like this picture quite a bit, even though there aren’t any people in it or anything. I like how it’s simple and dramatic. It should be a poster for a movie called ‘Love and Death in the Snow’.
I took it on the east side of Bank Street, just after leaving the Queensway underpass walking north. Before you get to Catherine St.
The transit strike
My position is that the union is too strong. No way those guys should be dictating scheduling, which is obviously a management responsibility. But they’ve been doing it for a long time and they think it’s their right.
How do you rein in a union that has become too strong? There’s no reset button on unions.
Let me tell you about a bus driver I ran into a couple of weeks ago. I don’t come off very well in this story, but that’s ok. I’m not running for anything.
I’d walked pretty far taking pictures and my feet hurt, so I went to get on a bus with some pink tickets I had in my wallet. As I was dropping my tickets in the fare box the driver tried to stop me.
“Sir!” he said, but he was too late. I’d already dropped them in.
“Sir! Those tickets have expired,” he said. “They’re no good!”
“Expired!” I said. “How could that be? Why would they expire?”
“They have expired,” he explained, “and they are no good.”
Did I mention that he was a south Asian guy? Well, he was.
Then I started insulting him. “You’re crazy,” I said. “How could tickets expire?”
“So are you,” he said. “And they have expired.”
“You’re an idiot,” I said. “I paid good money for them. Why would they expire?”
“And you are too,” he replied. “They have expired.”
I could see that I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I looked in my wallet and found some orange tickets. I put them in the box.
“There!” I yelled. “Are you happy now?”
“Thank you sir,” the south Asian driver said. I think he even smiled.
“grumblegrumblegrumble,” I said.
I still don’t think tickets should expire, and it bothers me that I threw away two tickets that I paid good money for. It’s some stupid thing that those morons at OC Transpo thought up: Cancel the old tickets, make them buy new ones, make them walk. But it’s not the fault of the driver. (Although I also think he didn’t have to notice the difference between pink and orange. In that light? With all those people? With all that traffic?)
But the moral of my story is that driving a bus isn’t exactly an unskilled job. They have to deal with people like me. That’s why they’re paid as well as they are.
Even so, it doesn’t mean they should be handling their own scheduling.
12 Comments
okay. two things. first, the photo – if you tip your head slightly to the right, you almost see a face in the sky, no?
second, i think that being christmas time it is a good time to consider how good some of us have it and that is what i think that bus drivers should do.
your average person would kill to have a job driving a bus for oc transpo.
yes, we all have shitty people that we have to deal with at work but then again, it’s all part of it. right?
raino: Yes.
A year ago I used an old one and the bus driver looked at me like I was trying to pull something over on him and he was showing me magnificent latitude to let me aboard anyway.
It discourages irregular riders to get that dump of emotional weight at a simple transaction. You might have thought I’d hoarded thousands or printed the a cache of old ones myself.
If they plan to make them expire, they need to stamp a date or something.
Robin, I like how you take responsability for your grumpiness. But, here is a trick, if you smile and talk sweetly to the bus drivers, (call it flirting if you want) you can get free rides. I rode for free often when there were buses…
If we ever have buses again all tickets and passes will have expired along with some of the drivers and most of the passengers. Then where will we be?
Grumpy.
I’d like to think of you as forceful. Everyone knows photographers are excellent diplomats.
As for expiring tickets, if this in fact a public service then the commission should be at least redeeming the tickets for their public.
As for reining in unions, although I’m a staunch unionist myself, managers need to keep the control they have rather than giving in for expediency and then trying to get the horses back in the barn after they have gotten out.
As for how many people would love to drive large vehicles in a crowded city and then put up with ” forceful tired photogs”, it aint always as easy as it seems.
With all that said the news today is that at least the 2 sides are going to talk again, never a bad thing in these disputes.
Ya, that’s it! Forceful. And diplomatic. Thanks for clearing that up Bandobras.
The thing is, management gave up their rights to control scheduling in previous rounds of collective bargaining. They bargained it away for other things. If they want it back, they’re going to have to negotiate for it. They can’t expect the union to just shrug and say “Well okay, if you want it back, here ya go.”
Yes, I agree. And I’m not defending management’s bad decisions. But the union has continually stated that they won’t negotiate as long as scheduling is on the table. It’s hard to talk to somebody that won’t talk.
this is a great photo. oddly it reminds me of the desert. snowscapes do that to me at.
Glad you like it Ruhh. I agree about the desert. If I didn’t say it was snow, I’m not sure most people would guess that it isn’t white sand.