Bus rant

I normally don’t rant about daily annoyances, but I feel I must do it today.

Okay.  Lots of people don’t know how to open the doors to get off the buses in Vancouver.  It also doesn’t help that there are many minorities and immigrants in this city, but the only instructions labeled on the doors are in English.  As the bus stopped, an older man wanted was waiting by the doors.  He touched the doors, as one is supposed to do to open them, but the bus driver hadn’t unlocked the doors (the lights at the doors weren’t on).  He pushed and pushed and hit the doors, yelling, “Get off!  Get off!”  A lady sitting nearby (I couldn’t actually see her from where I was sitting but heard her voice) simply advised him, “Push!”, as if it was the obvious thing to do.  Except of course, it didn’t matter how much he pushed the door (which he was already doing anyway)– the bus driver hadn’t unlocked the doors.

What bothered me about this was not the older man, but the woman, who wasn’t helping the situation.  There are some people in this city who think they know how the transit system works, or in this case, how to get off the bus, but they don’t.  In the words of George Carlin, “some people seem intelligent… but wait.  They’re just full of shit!”  And anyway, to open the door, you don’t need to push at all.  You don’t even need to touch the doors.  It’s activated by sensors.

I shouted to the bus driver, “Backdoor”, what has now become a sort of unofficial way of saying, “Hey, driver.  Could you open the door for me?”  The lights came on and the man got off.  Crisis over?

At the next stop, the same thing, oddly enough, happened again.  Another older man wanted to get out.  Doors were locked.  He shouted, “Get off, get off!” too (is this becoming the new “Backdoor!”?).  Unhelpful woman told him to “Push”, which he was already doing.  Bus driver unlocked the doors.  Sensor sensed him there.  They opened.

I wanted to go up to the woman and educate her on how to actually get off the bus, which does not include pushing the door or really, using any force.  But then I had to get off the bus, and lo and behold, I didn’t even have to touch the doors.