Saturday, November 24, 2007

if they would only by jeff rose

replace the "yield" sign with a "thank you" sign. Could you imagine what that
would
do for Trimet's image?!! I was thinking today about different features they
could add
to the bus to help us do our job better when I had the funniest thought- a mood
bus.
The bus would actually *change color* according to the mood of the operator.

OK, maybe it's not *that* funny.

When ever I see someone get on the bus with a bicycle wheel, I say to myself,
"gee,
wonder it they stole that." A guy got on my bus today after putting his bike
on the
bus and he had *two* wheels on him (besides the ones ON his bike). Both rear
tires
with the gears on them. Hmmm. The guy was acting pretty suspicious, and I
thought about calling in, but it really wasn't an emergency. Is there a
proceedure for
just calling in suspicious behavior? Say a couple of kids run onto your bus
each with
a stack of laptop computers, they try to sit really low in thier seats while
taking
glances over their shoulders. As you pull out some guy runs out from down the
block and stands on the corner looking around- looks like he was chasing after
someone. Did the kids just steal a bunch of laptops? We aren't supposed to use
the
PRTT, or the RTT and there is not menu item for this (or alot of other things
for that
matter) What would you do? Tell them to have a nice day when they get off?

A lot of times I'm not sure how to call something in, so I don't even bother.
Am I a
bad employee? a good one? Am I a moron?!! Don't answer that.

What do you do when someone shows you a TVM ticket- it looks good but it looks
like the printer just ran out of ink- you can hardly read it. You can't really
tell if it's
valid without taking it and giving it a good 10 second look, and the guy is
*really*
trying to show it to you (like he understands that it's hard to read). I'd
usually just
give him the benefit of the doubt, but today I... did.... something else. I was
in a
hurry and he practically handed me the ticket- so I took it. I took one look at
it and
tore a transfer off, punched it "DAY" and told him "here- this is good for the
rest of
the day" He said, "Oh, thanks and walked back and sat down.

Afterwards I assessed what I had done. I could tell it wasn't a monthly pass,
so it had
to be a day pass or less that was either valid or not. if it was a valid day
pass- he
doesn't care. If it was just a 1 hr transfer that was good, at least the next
operator
won't have to deal with a transfer they can't read. If it wasn't valid at all,
the guy gets
to ride for free with a valid transfer, but the ticket that is hard to read is
"out of the
system" and wont be used for the next month and a half. By possibly giving out
a day
pass for free I've "stolen from the company" and stand to lose my job. [laugh]

Any thoughts.

1 comment:

Adron said...

I wouldn't sweat it. Making the drivers' jobs easier is probably more financially reasonable to TriMet (and thus the taxpayers) than worrying about if you "stole from the company".

The fares, as I mention semi-frequently to people, only acount for about 20% of transit's cost or about 45-55% of operational costs. :(