Bus Gead

I've mentioned before that I drive a bus. Some bus people are...well, let's just say they're not functioning at an average human potential, which has a lot to do with why they're riding the bus.

The local transit authority for which I work has a Facebook page. I like to visit it occasionally to see what riders have to say and the TA's replies. One series of comments really floored me because of it's extremely poor grasp of the language, and I thought I'd share it with you.

It started off innocently enough with a complaint by a passenger (with her English abuses underlined in red -- that is the theme of this blog, after all):

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If this actually happened (and it may well have), that is indeed unfortunate, and doesn't look good for us. There are many reasons this could have happened, and the TA explains one in their response to Alejandra:

True dat! It can be hard to see someone who is taking shelter at a distance from the bus stop when it's raining. There are many other possible reasons Alejandra was missed, as she alleges. I say "alleges", because, as Dr. House likes to say, "People lie." Or if they're not lying, they're mistaken. Sometimes passengers aren't familiar with "were" every stop "are", and they can't understand why the bus passed them up. We have a pretty hard and fast rule that if you aren't within 50 feet of a designated bus stop (except for certain areas that are flag stop zones), we aren't obligated to stop for you. In addition to it being unsafe, the buses would never run on time (and they do, occasionally) if we had to stop for every bozo who tries to wave down a bus just anywhere.

Anyway, back to the business at hand - English mangling. Good job, by the way, TA, for your wise, well-written and error-free response to Alejandra.

Several days later, another Facebook "liker" of the TA decided to chime in on the somewhat stale conversation with a "new" comment of his own:

If you examine the first part of James's comment, you will see that he simply copied and pasted Alejandra's comment - mistakes and all - and changed a few words. I didn't bother trying to underline his mistakes, they pretty much speak for themselves, since James appears to be one of those people who constantly TYPES IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Annoying, isn't? I especially like how he didn't succeed in changing Alejanda's "im" ("I'm") to "THY" ("they"), but instead put "thy" after "im". I also find it interesting that his second use of "driver's" is exactly the same as the first one from Alejandra - lower case and unnecessary apostrophe firmly in place. Apparently he copied that one word out of her comment and pasted it into his all cap rant. Wouldn't that be more trouble than just hammering out the word for yourself with the cap lock on?

His claim that "ALL" drivers pass "EVERY ONE" up when it rains is pretty outrageous. We're not that bad. See, James, you can uses italics to emphasize words instead of capitalizing them.

I'm not sure why the TA bothered to try to dignify James's ridiculous rehashed comment with a response, but they did (the customer is always right, I guess):

To which James replied:

Seriously, WTF? What the heck is a "gead" supposed to be? Did he mean "geek", "head", "guide" (see later)? Does it rhyme with "head" or "bead"? Given his poor command of English (which will really become obvious in his next comment), anything is possible.

The TA gamely tried to reason with James, despite his dubious response to their last effort:

I guess every "gead" deserves his chance at a fair assessment of his vague beef, even to the point of actually viewing the security camera footage from the buses. Funny how this same surveillance system was unable to assist a driver when his backpack was stolen by a passenger, but they're willing to use it when an obvious idiot has some minor complaint about the bus service. Ah well, I'm getting off topic here.

Also, sorry about the red underline, TA, but I have to be fair. I just hope you never find out who I really am.

The TA's attempts to give credence to his complaints seemed to send James completely off the rails:

Umm...what? Do James's attempts to "till" others how to "ues" and "ried" the "buss" qualify his as a guide, or mayble a "gead" (see earlier)? Is "buss" one bus with an extra "s", or multiple buses? It seems to swing either way.

Is James trying to say that since he is somehow able to ride every bus everyday, that the TA can just pull any video from any bus and find evidence to support his claims? I'm really astounded by his statement that - to paraphrase - he pays too much to ride the bus and he likes it. Did he just leave out "don't" before the "like", or is he some kind of maniac who actually enjoys being over-charged for public transit? Maybe I'm totally misreading him - maybe "toomach" doesn't mean "too much", but is yet another unparsable Jamesism, like "gead". If he does indeed like paying "toomach", it would seem that "toomach" must mean something like "such a reasonable price", or maybe even "nothing at all". I may have an insight into James's modus operandi to support that second possibility (no James,I didn't italicize those words to emphasize them, but because they are a foreign phrase) - read on.

I didn't recognize James as a rider from his profile picture, but I showed this Facebook convo to the young lady who works in the customer service kiosk at the downtown Transit Center. She recognized him and said that he is one of College Town's many pedicab drivers. When she said that, I thought I knew who she was talking about. I've occasionally had this one passenger who kind of looks like the picture. He is a pedicab driver, and he may be partially developmentally disabled. He certainly isn't the brightest bulb. He also rides using a Smart Card, one of  the magnetic or micro-chip embedded cards which are issued by a local agency so that all a developmentally disabled person has to do is pass it over a reader on the fare box.

Unfortunately, this possible James slyly told me that he was using his uncle's Smart Card - which is a no-no. Apparently this guy is not quite developmentally disabled enough to qualify for his own Smart Card. After all, he's able to run his own pedicab business and figure out how to scam the transit authority. Sadly, he's not smart enough to know that he shouldn't brag to employees of the transit authority that he's committing fraud against them.

I also think it's interesting to examine the timeline of James's Facebook conversation with the TA. It all took place within less than half an hour. That's pretty close to real time. Actually it probably was real time if you factor in how long it must have taken James to type his comments while apparently wearing boxing gloves. After James's last bout of gibberish, the good folks at the TA seemingly had had enough, for they had no  response to that. But kudos to the TA for trying to give credence to this guy's "problem". It's too bad he was too out of it to realize that someone was actually trying to help him.