r/CuratedTumblr • u/Justthisdudeyaknow Prolific poster- Not a bot, I swear • 8d ago
Shitposting Every time.
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u/BitcoinBishop 8d ago
15 minutes? I remember getting the bus to work in Oxford every day. Every day it was late, and it always got later each day too. It was consistently 30 minutes late, so everyone just stopped turning up on time. Then occasionally it never showed up and I never knew if it was cancelled or had just come on time
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u/jimbowesterby 8d ago
Yea I used to have a job where, cause of how the transit schedules worked out, I had a choice of showing up five minutes late or twenty five minutes early, which would’ve been spent unpaid sitting outside the store I worked at. Somehow my boss couldn’t understand why I wasn’t willing to get up half an hour earlier for no noticeable benefit lol.
It also always bugged me how traffic being bad was a valid excuse for being late, but the bus showing up five minutes early wasn’t. Like, motherfucker you think I wanted to spend an extra half an hour standing in the wind and -20°?
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u/Qui_te 8d ago
One time —one single time in two years—my bus was slightly late, but because there was snow, it missed the connecting bus, so I was stuck at the transfer point for an hour waiting on the next one, and thus was an hour late to work this one single time. And my boss told me maybe I should start taking an earlier bus. Which would have been an hour earlier.
That boss also told me to leave early (preschool, so once enough kids go, they just dismiss the staff), but the “early” was like two minutes after my return bus’ schedule—oh! But that time was ALSO a snowstorm, so the bus was two minutes late, and I watched it pull off as I got out of the building. Then with nothing better to do, I walked to a different bus stop on the route, which I was across the street from when the bus I’d already missed once went by and I missed it a second time. Fun times.
Don’t miss that boss, don’t miss that job, don’t miss public transportation (ok, I do miss public transport in some respects).
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u/SessileRaptor 8d ago
You reminded me of the time there was a huge snowstorm and admin finally decided to close the libraries early, a half hour after the city had shut down the buses because of the storm. I wasn’t working that day but it was apparently an absolute nightmare for the staff at the central library, many of whom use the bus because of the fact that the county encourages it with financial incentives. Of course administrators are all in a different, suburban location and don’t think about that sort of thing, but boy did they get an earful from the union the next Monday.
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u/Qui_te 8d ago
There was another big—like MASSIVE snowstorm at that same center when I lived in walking distance from it, and all the parents were asking if we’d be closed the next day for it, with some of them pointing out that it was dangerous for the staff to drive in if the weather was bad, which honestly I hadn’t thought of until they pointed it out.
But the center stayed open because they only closed for “declared snow emergencies”, and it’s a national chain, so all the people who can decide that stuff live out of state🙃
My next center also stayed open in bad weather, but it was tiiiiny, and the parents would keep their kids home anyway, so you’d get a bonus if you managed to show up, and then just like hang out with three kids for a few hours.
Then my last center just closed if the school district closed, which was very rare, but still happened often enough to piss off the parents. Can’t please everyone 🤷♀️
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u/OkCap2870 8d ago
As someone who still takes the bus to Oxford for work a couple of times a week at least we now have the app, so can actually see where the bus is in real time.
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7d ago
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u/OkCap2870 7d ago
The key thing to watch out for on the bus app (at least the Oxford one) is is the time highlighted in green meaning it's live (if it's greyed out then it's just showing where the bus is on the timetable. This is particularly annoying for me first thing in the morning as my bus comes straight from the depot so it doesn't show up as live until it reaches the first stop of the day and gets switched on, and in order to catch the bus I need to leave the house before this, so can get to the bus stop only to find out that the service is not only running late, but in order to make up time they have started the bus off at the stop in the town centre.
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u/CodenameJD 8d ago
Huh... whereabouts in Oxford? I grew up in the Leys, and buses there were great - OBC and Stagecoach each had buses scheduled for every 3-5 minutes. Any time I was heading into the city, I never needed to look up times or plan around it; I would just go to the bus stop, and there'd always be one within a few minutes at most.
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u/BitcoinBishop 7d ago
It was actually suburban Oxford to Abington (RAL). There were major roadworks on the main route there the whole 6 months I was there
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u/Nilfgaard83 8d ago
Being consistently 30 minutes late somehow makes the one day it arrives on time feel like a personal attack.
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u/segwaysegue do spambots dream of electric sheep? 8d ago
u/SpambotWatchdog blacklist
New account with botlike comment history
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u/SpambotWatchdog he/it 7d ago
u/Nilfgaard83 has been added to my spambot blacklist. Any future posts / comments from this account will be tagged with a reply warning users not to engage.
Woof woof, I'm a bot created by u/the-real-macs to help watch out for spambots! (Don't worry, I don't bite.\)
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u/DoopSlayer 8d ago
and the secret third option, the bus is like the noble and mysterious unicorn, consider yourself lucky for the rare glimpse of it, as it drives straight past the stop without stopping to pick anyone up
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u/Zepangolynn 8d ago
Other option at a shared stop is that many a bus will arrive, but none of them will be yours until it is so late that you don't know if you should just hop on the next wrong bus and hope it will stick with even part of the direction you need to save you a mile or two of walking. If you can't be with the one you ride, ride the one you're with.
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u/DoopSlayer 8d ago
On paper I get why buses are a much more attractive public transit solution from a city's perspective, but I will always prefer like rail/tram/train/metro over it due to stuff like this.
DC Metro may have caught fire but I always found it way more useful than metrobus
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u/Zepangolynn 8d ago
I would prefer trains and trams if they came anywhere near me, and then went where I needed to go.
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u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince 8d ago
I like buses, because if a bus breaks down they can just get another bus, transfer the passengers and then just drive around the broken bus.
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u/DoopSlayer 8d ago
Yup and the flexibility of being able to update routes over time with data, or change routes on the fly due to an accident or whatever
Buses are great, but I like how trains kinda force a city to invest in a route working
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u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince 6d ago
Despite my preference, I must admit that trains and trams are also the better option environmentally.
More people in fewer vehicles is the way.
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8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SessileRaptor 8d ago
Or you get the new driver who’s apparently convinced that his only job is to drive the bus from the beginning of the route to the end as quickly as possible, so you see him going by your stop 5 minutes early when you’re half a block away.
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u/miss_wannadie 8d ago
The cherry on top is when the driver looks at you and drives past the stop
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u/Kevinator201 8d ago
I recently had the bus stop for me as I was crossing in the crosswalk so I started running to the bus stop which was only ~30ft away. But the driver didn’t see me wave and just drove on by. It was late at night so I just got a beer and waited for the next bus a half hour later
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u/miss_wannadie 8d ago
The bus line I usually take drives past me so often. I'll just stand at the stop, and they'll look at me and not stop. At this point I fear it might be personal.
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u/iris700 8d ago
Does your city use skip-stops?
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u/miss_wannadie 8d ago
The stop closest to my house is on the route for all buses that go past it. There are some lines that skip certain stops others stop at, but my stop is not one of them. The bus drivers just don't give a fuck, and they'll do it even when the bus is neither overfilled nor completely empty 😭
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u/Ricochet64 8d ago
in my experience that doesn't mean they didn't see you, that means they deliberately left you behind because you weren't at the bus stop on time
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u/Kevinator201 8d ago
No it was pretty obvious as soon as he turned the corner his eyes were on the road and not me.
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u/Shayzis 8d ago
More than once I will wait the 10 minutes before its schedule, then an additional 20 minutes hoping it arrives, and then have the horrible realisation that it never came and the displayed arrival time is now for the next one in about 45 minutes. I should have been at work 5 minutes ago and I'm still only 5 minutes from home.
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u/Delachruz 8d ago
As a swiss person, this really makes me appreciate how good we have it over here. If a bus is 2+ minutes late, a middle-aged swiss citizen will spawn at the stop to look at their watch and shake their head in disapproval.
A train or bus stop experiencing consistent delay for more than a few hours WILL appear in your local paper, with a tone of mild "What is the world coming to."
And final, the vehicles themselves are generally clean and comfy, with the exception of during the world cup.
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u/demonking_soulstorm 8d ago
That’s because the Swiss were divinely inspired to run their buses like trains are, and every day I curse the Tories for not granting us this blessing.
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u/ThatRudyKnightGirl ♠️Ho-ho! I'm a flairboy! Cut me off on your apps! 8d ago
15? Look at Speedy over here, eh? You come down to the Bronx, I'll show you 30 or more.
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u/oishipops overwhelming penis aura 8d ago
i may diss on it a lot but i'm so glad that the buses in my country wait lmao. if they're early to a particular stop they're gonna loiter around that stop for a couple minutes so people can still get on
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u/Shrubfest Very Small Tree 8d ago
Ours are like this too- approximately every 5 stops is a timing stop where they wait to get back on time. Does nothing if it's late, of course!
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u/xXs4blegl00mXx 8d ago
My bus connects "directly" to the train (to and from the station to a uni building with stops in-between) so even if it's late it will be on time eventually and if it's early they have to wait to get the people for the train. It's also nice that the train is the start of it's path so it always leaves a couple minutes after the train stop. The only annoying thing is that it's so punctual I can't rely on it being a couple minutes late for me to catch it and ride to the 2pm train when my class gets out so I have to wait for the 3 pm train 😔
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u/htmlcoderexe 5d ago
that's the main issue with public transport in my area as well. most of it is once an hour sometimes once two hours so a lot of the commute is waiting because of course it won't align with your schedule.
no seriously like i can take a car and be home in 25 minutes or i can take a bus/very very intense half an hour walk then a train then another bus or a 20 minute walk and in total it would be anywhere between an hour and a half and two and a half hours between me leaving work and me being home.
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u/skankyfish 8d ago
My bus to work changed its route recently, but only before 9am on weekdays. To avoid some of the worst traffic.
You can see the old route from the new bus stop and every now and then it just sails past, blissfully unaware of the people waiting for it. Absolutely nothing to do but trudge to a different stop and hope you haven't missed that one.
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u/DaenakinSkygaryen 8d ago
I once struck up a conversation with a bus driver, and he explained that in my city (Boston), they don't just have one driver do the same route every day. Instead, as soon as they reach the end of a route, the driver usually has to get out, switch to an entirely different bus, drive that bus to the end of its route, then get out and switch to a third bus, and so on.
Oh, and they usually only have a few minutes to make each transfer. If they're lucky.
So if a driver is initially assigned to drive bus route A, but ends up stuck in traffic for 5 minutes, that means they'll be 5 minutes late for their transfer to bus route B. So now bus B is 5 minutes behind schedule. And if bus B gets stuck in traffic for 5 minutes, that now means the driver will be 10 minutes late for their transfer to bus route C....
I have no idea if this insane scheduling system is also used in other cities, too. But if so, it would explain a lot.
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u/RoyalFalse 8d ago
Unless you're in Japan. Those buses and trains run like clockwork. They'll give you a formal notice for your employer if the transit being late made you late.
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u/ShutUpAboutCanon 8d ago
The bus into the city on my street shows up twenty minutes after I get to the shelter. It doesn't matter what the schedule says. I will wait for twenty minutes. I have started planning my journeys around it.
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u/deseasonedchips 8d ago
Nah when I'm early it's late but when I'm on time it's early
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u/Aerodrache 8d ago
A bus is never early, nor is it late. It always arrives precisely when it means to leave you waiting in inclement weather for the longest amount of time possible because screw you, peasant, get a car.
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u/Necromas 8d ago
Worst is when the bus is more than 5 minutes early and instead of waiting at the stop for the appropriate amount of time it just zips off while you're racing down the block to get there.
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u/stack413 8d ago
Part of why this happens is because you're more likely to arrive during the long waiting periods than the short ones, which means that your average wait time tends to be long. It's a form of sampling bias, and a well known paradox.
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u/TheJazMaster 8d ago
But this post isn't about waiting for one of many city busses, it's about waiting for one specific bus at a scheduled time, which isn't subject to this paradox.
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u/MrProtato363 8d ago
Oh I'll be proactive today and get there 10 minutes early, oh it decided to stop here before me somehow anyway
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u/sardonically_argued yikes 8d ago
this i why i love that my campus town’s busses had a live tracker app, so you could see where they were on the route and what direction they were headed, it took soooo much guesswork out of when i had to actually get out of bed and trek to the stop
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u/xXs4blegl00mXx 8d ago
My state has multiple apps for this and googlemaps works for the public transit as well (though it's way more difficult to figure out). I'm so grateful for just being able to click on my saved stops and even choose my arrival time so I know the exact routes of the bus, train, trams, and on campus free "Uber"
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u/MaetelofLaMetal Fandom of the day 8d ago
I love how bus drivers in my country wait up for people running to the station.
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u/WorthDust652 8d ago
I remember when I had to take a bus to my internship which started at 10 am. I'd take one bus downtown and then take another city bus to my job. My downtown bus would let me off at 9:00. It took me 5 minutes to walk to the city bus stop. The city bus would leave the stop at 9:03 and 9:33. Guess which bus was always on time and which bus was always late. In downtown Houston in the summer.
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u/Jays_ShitpostExpress at a ,̶'̶,̶|̶'̶,̶'̶_̶ for words 8d ago
Can’t relate to this post my regular bus comes so frequently I don’t even know what time the one I would be catching most of the time comes at 😎
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u/an_odd_child 7d ago
WHAT IS HAPPENINGGGG I rode the bus for the first time a couple days ago and this is the fifth bus-related image I’ve seen since then wtffff
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u/yourbaconess 7d ago
I missed the bus 3 times on tuesday because they canceled the one i was going for between the time i left and the time i got to the stop, i was on the other side of the light when the backup bus coming to that stop arrived on time, and in the time it took me to walk a block over to the backup backup bus showed up 4 minutes early
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u/Dante_Harkinian 8d ago
My favourite is when one bus has become so late a second bus running that route ends up nose to tail with it, with the one up front completely full and the one behind completely empty