~Wednesday~ I took an early bus in this morning to get to work in time to help my officemate, Rhonda, set up for our surprise birthday breakfast for our manager. When I arrived, Rhonda had done all the decorations in terms of setting the table and putting streamers up over our manager’s office door.
The Breakfast Buffet
You may remember from my grocery store list in yesterday’s entry that I brought the orange and apple juice, made those sausage biscuits, and that’s the sliced Panera Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake in the upper right corner of the table, whose presentation Rhonda improved by dropping some fresh strawberries in the center of.
In addition to the decorations, Rhonda brought the bagels there behind the orange juice, the fruit bowl in the middle, made the brownies in the basket behind the bagel, made the little egg quiches beyond the fruit bowl, and brought the Danish pastries (apple, lemon, and cheese) in the upper left hand corner of the table.
We had a nice little gathering with a good number of people stopping by to wish Jude a Happy Birthday and partaking of the breakfast buffet. Jude was quite touched by it all. Yay!
I had one work meeting today, our standing Wednesday Student E-mail Initiative meeting, which runs from 1:00 – 2:15, and for which I’m the minute-taker.
On the 6:30 city bus ride home, the bus pulled away from its “sync stop” on Beryl Road across from the post office and the Raleigh School of Ballet, and as it turned left onto Method Road it stopped just short of the next stop. A guy got on the bus who evidently was running to the Beryl Road stop, but didn’t make it before she pulled away. The following absolute SCREAMING match ensued:
Passenger: YOU COULDN’T WAIT UNTIL I GOT TO THE BUS BEFORE PULLING AWAY???
Driver: I didn’t see you.
Passenger: WHAT? YOU DON’T LOOK AROUND BEFORE YOU PULL AWAY???
Driver: QUIT YELLING AT ME! AND YOU DON’T TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB!
Passenger: I WAS RUNNING TO THE BUS AS YOU WERE PULLING AWAY! YOU DON’T LOOK AROUND BEFORE YOU PULL OUT?
Driver: I SAID I DIDN’T SEE YOU! I DIDN’T SEE YOU UNTIL I TURNED THIS CORNER. AND I STOPPED. I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO STOP BETWEEN STOPS EITHER.
Passenger: WELL YOU SHOULD LOOK AROUND BEFORE YOU PULL OUT!!!
Driver: DON’T TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB!
Passenger: I COULD DO THIS JOB BETTER THAN YOU!
Driver: CAT [Capital Area Transit] IS HIRING!
Passenger: AT LEAST I’D LOOK AROUND BEFORE DRIVING AWAY FROM A STOP.
Driver: CAT IS HIRING!
She said something else he couldn’t hear and he got up and said, “What’d you say?” She ignored him. “WHAT’D YOU SAY?” he yelled. She didn’t say anything else. He sat back down and said again, “I COULD DO THIS JOB BETTER THAN YOU.”
Driver: CAT IS HIRING! STOP TALKING TO ME!
Passenger: YOU CAN’T MAKE ME STOP TALKING TO YOU.
Driver: YOU CAN STOP TALKING TO ME, OR YOU CAN GET OFF THIS BUS!
Passenger: YOU CAN’T MAKE ME GET OFF THE BUS. I JUST DON’T SEE WHY YOU CAN’T LOOK AROUND BEFORE YOU PULL AWAY!
Driver: YOU DON’T TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB!
Finally, the pissing contest ended; however, not for long. At a subsequent stop, a young lady and her little boy got on and the lady said something to him about it being hot, as she noticed the he was sweating like crazy unbeknownst to her as a result of his recent sprint to the bus.
Passenger: YEAH, SHE PULLED OUT WITHOUT LOOKING AROUND AND I HAD TO RUN A GOOD WAYS TO THE BUS. SHE SAID SHE DIDN’T SEE ME UNTIL SHE TURNED THE CORNER.
I thought the bus driver was going to slip into an apoplectic rage, but she just bit her tongue and kept driving acting like she couldn’t hear him talking about her as if she wasn’t sitting three feet away from him.
I so wanted to say to the guy as I exited the bus, “You’re an asshole, man.” The thing that got me was that not once did he take any responsibility for not being at the stop at its scheduled stop, particularly since it’s a sync stop, which is a stop where if the bus arrives early it waits until the scheduled departure time for that stop to get back on schedule. So, if she pulled away before he got there, then he was late.
Dancing was an absolute ton of fun tonight. We had a great crowd there and I danced and danced and danced. In addition to a bunch of line dances, I two-stepped a lot with a lot of different people.
At one point, Van played a waltz and I desperately missed waltzing with Robert.