dimanche 13 août 2017
17 Greyhound Bus Driver Employee Secrets to Read Before Riding
Do Greyhound drivers really see a "black dog" run across the road when they're tired? What are the prettiest routes in North America to take by bus? And what strange things do they see on the job? A former Greyhound bus employee did an IamA on Reddit, and they did not hold back on spilling all the secrets about what it was like to work as a driver. Read on to find out some behind-the-scenes juice about the job.
1. Tell me about this "black dog." Is it some urban tale?
"There's a movie with Patrick Swayze, Meat Loaf, Randy Travis, and Gabriel Casseus where Patrick Swayze is a truck driver. He talks about the black dog you see after you've been on the road for too long and start getting too tired. It'll come out of nowhere in the middle of the night and dart out at you, and you'll think it's real and try to avoid it. I thought it was just some made up movie plot till the first time I saw it when I was really tired on an overnight. Not necessarily a dog, but any hallucination of something darting out in front of the bus. Happened quite a few times, very scary."
2. What's that one story you always tell?
"Pick your poison. There's my last night of training driving blind through a blizzard (16 inches of snow, zero visibility) all night long on an interstate that was shut down at 25 mph for 10 hours. Had an inch of ice frozen onto some parts of the windshield . . .
There was another time at Greyhound where I was doing NYC to Springfield, MA the day the tornadoes hit there. Passenger asked me as we left New Britain, CT, what do we do if one hits. I said, park the bus under a bridge and hope for the best. Then as I got ready to leave Hartford, after clearing with central dispatcher in Dallas that it was OK to proceed, the passengers all freaked out that it had just hit downtown Springfield. I called Springfield directly, and they said stay put. Finally 30 minutes later, I got the all clear. Downtown was a mess, but we thought it was over. I offload and go into the drivers room and hear over the TV 'we now have a confirmed touchdown on the Massachusetts Turnpike.' I walked up to the dispatch booth and said, load me up I'm getting the fuck outta here now!"
3. Why do you think Greyhound kind of has a bad reputation?
"The clientele. Even in training they tell us we'll be driving the nations bail jumpers, fleeing felons, ex cons, pimps, and prostitutes. In my experience though, most of my passengers were pleasant and just wanted to get from A to B. A lot of the stations are a hub of homelessness, beggars, and especially in NYC, the mentally ill. The ones Greyhound owns though largely employ some sort of security that keeps it restricted to ticketed passengers and those waiting for them (Philly for example) . . . between riding and driving, I've never had an issue that was truly concerning.
The bad rep also comes from the way they operate. Just because you have a ticket with a specific time and specific date, it doesn't mean you're guaranteed a seat on that bus. They just keep selling tickets regardless of how many seats are available . . . If there aren't enough seats, you gotta wait for the next one, which can be several hours.
You also hear of drivers getting lost a lot. That's because they give us these paper directions that are often wrong or haven't been updated since god knows when . . . Even when they are right, we're trying to drive the bus, read the directions, and watch for the street sign signs . . . It's honestly a miracle getting lost doesn't happen more often."
4. Are you not allowed to bring a smartphone?
"The problem is that the mapping software on them will often send you ways that buses aren't allowed to go (look up any video of an 18-wheeler on the Northern State Parkway on Long Island and see what happens) and also that Greyhound has their own in-house company-prescribed routing they want you to take. If you get into an accident off-route, it's instant termination. They also follow you on GPS and sometimes by car and will call you if you're off-route (even though we aren't supposed to talk on the phone while driving)."
5. What's the nastiest thing that's happened in your bus?
"Toward the end of my training, probably the fifth week or so, I was doing a schedule from NYC to Harrisburg, PA. Before we even got to Easton, PA, some guy threw up the entire big gulp of Kool-Aid he was drinking when he boarded all over the second row."
6. What made you want to become a Greyhound driver, convenience or you wanted to travel?
"I had always been fascinated with the road and big trucks. All throughout college, I knew I was gonna at least try out some sort of job where I could just have the road and my music, a sort of place of peace for me. After I graduated, a financial situation came up that was ultimately what pushed me into filling out the application. I got the job and fell in love with the daily adventure and how soothing the combination of the highway and my music really was for me."
7. Why are buses kept so unreasonably cold? Low heat in Winter and very high air-conditioning in the Summer.
"For me, it was to stay awake on the overnight runs. Also, the windshield reflects the sun like crazy, so I always gotta crank the AC to compensate during the day."
8. Ever fall asleep while driving?
"It's something that most of us would never admit, but yes, unfortunately, and I'm sorry for all the lives I put in danger when it happened. I'd say legit eyes closed asleep happened twice, maybe three times. But that eyes-wide-open sleep, where you're there but not there, is what happens most. It took me seven overnight runs to Montreal to be able to really handle the long night driving. Now I'm good, and I know when I can push on, when I know it's time to call it quits."
9. When broken down in an area with no cell reception, do you usually have some sort of radio coverage or a book with local frequencies or are you stuck using CB?
"No CBs on Greyhound buses, no radios either. No cell service means walk to the nearest highway emergency phone. I was getting ready to walk it once on I-87 in the Adirondacks but the northbound bus showed up and pulled over and we shouted across the highway at each other troubleshooting ideas."
10. What are some of the prettiest routes you've taken?
"Daytime NYC to Montreal during Spring thaw, no debate. It's the run that made me fall in love with driving."
11. When you get to your destination, do you get to just hang out in that city for a while or do you get right back on the bus and go on your next drive?
"It all depends; no two days are ever the same unless you have enough seniority to bid a regular run. Sometimes it's load up right away to either go back or to somewhere else; some days you have to wait around for a few hours to find out what you're doing next; some days you know what you're doing next and have some free time to kill and can walk around cuz you don't need to be at the yard or terminal for them to tell you what you're doing next; some days they put you to bed and you can kinda enjoy an hour or two out waking around; and sometimes they leave you up there for days and kinda forget you exist.
It also depends on the city. Philly, Harrisburg, Montreal, you're right there in the heart of town, so it's easy to go walking around . . . If they put us to bed in Atlantic City, it was a mile to the nearest bar (and believe me, we'd walk it!) . . . Montreal was the place I consistently got the most free time to really enjoy the area."
12. What do you mean by put you to bed?
"Going to bed means going to either the hotel or the dorm to get a minimum of nine hours off duty before they call you back in. Sometimes they call you exactly nine hours from when you pulled in, sometimes you'll be sitting there for days.
That's when it really sucks because you'll go to sleep, wake up and stay up all day, then finally when you're nice and tired and ready to go back to sleep, they're like, hey come in and do this eight-hour overnight run. You can look at the board for that city online and try to guess when they're going to call you, but oftentimes something comes up that messes up what time you think they're gonna call you. Oftentimes I'd keep myself cooped up in the hotel room trying to match my sleep to what I was reading on the board so I'd be ready to work a 15-hour day, but you can only force yourself to sleep so much. That's when the job starts getting depressing and messing with your head."
13. So they only require you to be off duty for nine hours between shifts? They don't require that you get some sleep in that time? Doesn't sound very safe.
"Yup. When in the hotel or dorm, it's nine hours + one hour to report . . . they can only mandate you be off duty, they can't mandate that you sleep during that time off. They urge you to sleep, but we've all got things that need to get done, sometimes during our time off. And then, yeah, the varying schedule means your body's internal clock is all f*cked up . . . There's a reason most of Greyhounds' severe accidents are fatigue-related. You can of course always call out sick or fatigued, and they'll book you off for another 12 hours or so, but you can only do it so much before it starts causing problems with management."
14. Any fun/good tips you would give to travelers that might not be thought of right away?
"Just keep your eyes on your stuff at all time. The Austin terminal is one of the sketchier ones I've been to. If you see the guy with one hand about twice the size of the other who will offer to do a one-handed handstand for some vodka, walk away, fast. Also, it's way different from flying. A bit more lax, but with a more sketch vibe."
15. How was the pay?
"When I started it was 16 and change an hour for driving with passengers, and by the time I left seven months later, I was at $18.64/hr. But they pay you less for other things, like deadheading (driving an empty bus to another city), cushioning (riding a bus to another city where they need drivers), and sitting on protection (sitting around at a terminal, waiting to be told what to do). There's also layover and meals, which kicked in after I think 16 hours laying over at a foreign city and then again I think at 24 hours. The problem was oftentimes they liked to "forget" to put those things in your check, and so in your limited time off, you gotta spend time filing pay claims. In total, I'd say they owe me about $3,000 in unpaid stuff that added up in seven months. The hourly pay was also part of why I left."
16. As a city bus driver, I warn people that this job sucks your social life to a minimum. Did you have to deal with family issues while at GH?
"I went to Greyhound the month after graduating college, so I was single with no kids, but they tell you in the interview that the job destroys families. I don't know how people do it unless they just flat out hate their family."
17. What's the strangest thing you've ever seen on your travels?
"Aside from the multiple times I thought I saw something dart out in front of the bus . . . I watched what looked like an 18-wheeler approaching in my mirror very fast. It was a blizzard, dead of the night, up in the Adirondacks. I kept watching him because I thought he was gonna rear end me. The headlights got closer and closer and all of a sudden they were gone. There had been no exit ramp or anything. I don't know if he went into the ditch or what. I never found out."
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