You wait all day and then three come along at once......

LAST week I had a precious afternoon off work after working late the previous night and was full of the joys of, er, winter thinking about how I was going to spend my few hours off. [I know my profile says I’m working from home and I am, it’s just sometimes I have to go into my office too, it’s a long story!]

The hairdressers perhaps, or maybe browsing around the shops. Maybe a trip to the supermarket to pick up some fresh goodies to cook myself a nice meal for once. Oooh, I could even go meet a friend and have an illicit afternoon in the pub! The possibilities were endless!

Standing in a phone box at a bus stop sheltering from the pouring rain waiting for more than three hours on a bus was not something I had in mind. Yet this is exactly what I ended up doing.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, yet again Dublin Bus let me down and left me stranded miles from home with no alternative source of transport (unless you count a 15 minute walk through the rain to the Luas stop and then a 45 minute walk at the other end that is.) I was not a happy camper. (I realise now I would have been quicker going the Luas route, but hindsight is 20/20.)

I was cold, I was wet, I was increasingly angry and I was slightly disturbed by the old man at the bus stop who kept trying to get into the phone box with me.

When I eventually got home (after being reliably informed by the bus driver who DID show up that the previous six scheduled buses had ‘gone missing’) it was all Mammy Dunne and her home made steak pie could do to calm me down. I was raging!

The next day I indignantly rang Dublin Bus to complain expecting profuse apologies and promises of free bus tickets only to be met with the most relaxed, jovial complaints officer I have ever come across.

“Yeah, we have had some complaints about that route alright, it’s a bummer isn’t it?” sez he.

“Jaysis, three hours IS a long time to be waiting alright. I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you the number of the depot and if your bus doesn’t show up you can ring them and ask if the bus is going or not and if not you can make other arrangements. Tell them I sent you.”

Quite.

So the response from the state transport body when you complain is to check if the bus is going to show up and if not make “other arrangements”? Well that’s just great! That’s what I pay a huge amount of tax for that seems to go into a black hole, to make “other arrangements”.

I think Eddie Hobbs is right and this really is a Rip Off Republic. I’m thinking of organising a bus boycott. Watch this space!

Photo from www.dublinbus.ie