Tolerable; (adjective) Not too unpleasant or severe to put up with. Fairly good. Not bad. Manageable.
I’m not going to break that 65 percent down any further and say X amount are actually great. And Y amount are just complacent and unnoticeable, because that’s not fair to either group. There are a lot of passengers that are actually prodigious people. Some say hi, get to know me, even bring me things like coffee or muffins. Some believe it or not, actually care. They rule. Some just get on, acknowledge me and go sit down and don’t draw any attention to themselves. They could be happy, they could be miserable, you wouldn’t be able to tell either way. Those are the people, in my mind anyway that make the world go round. But then you have the other 35 percent, and that’s who we’ve gathered here today to discuss.Now before we go on, I want to make one point abundantly clear. I know the TTC as a company is a mess. Hell, I work for them and I don’t have any clue what’s going on a good majority of the time, and that frustrates the hell out of a control freak like me. They back track and they change their songs almost daily. No one really seems to know if they are coming or going, and the worst part about it is that every other day it seems there’s a new plan coming down the pipeline that will improve our outdated and archaic system, only to have another new plan presented to everyone a week and a half later that supersedes the previous new plan. Tiresome at best. So with that said, when you get on and have a legitimate beef, although I won’t be able to clear anything up for you or give you reasonable rationale for whatever it is that’s got you peeved, I will no doubt listen and agree, and probably make a pretty decent joke out of the situation for you. That however is all I can honestly do, because the problems you and I both hate are about 7 levels above my pay grade. And it must be noted as well, that listening and agreeing will only be done if your tactics of bringing said situations to my attention are done with respect and class. Failure to do so will undoubtedly result in you becoming even more angered, I promise you that. But anyway, onto the douchebag self-entitled assholes, er; I mean the other 35 percent.
The first guy I want to talk about comes in all shapes and sizes. This is the guy the world could not do without. We are going to call him Mr. Important. Mr. Important does things like walk slowly to the bus, whether in the station or on the street, even when he sees the bus driver and all of his passengers are waiting patiently for him. It’s not his fault though because he really can’t run, or walk briskly for that matter, because Mr. Important is usually on the phone. That’s what important people spend their time doing you see. He will also do things like get on the bus and stand in the doorway taking forever to pay, even when there is a lineup of people behind him. Maybe that lineup of people are standing in the freezing cold or the snow or the rain, it doesn’t really matter, because Mr. Important moves at his speed and everyone else will just have to wait for him. It’s easy to identify Mr. Important if you aren’t sure who he may be. All you have to do is say something to him and you’ll know it’s him immediately. Mr. Important won’t acknowledge what you say, and doesn’t respect you enough to respond with any words, but what he will do is look at you with a glare that screams “Why are you talking to me, have you no idea who the fuck I am?” But if you’re still confused as to who this man is, just look for the red carpet and marching band that accompany him every minute of every day every single place he journeys to. If you see him, just wait patiently for the bus to reach the beer store or the government office, that’s where Mr. Important usually gets off, and then we can get moving again and get on with our day.Next up is Miss Late. Please understand that Miss Late has a little problem. Miss Late just can’t for the life of her get anywhere on time. You’ll see her halfway between stops, or on the other side of the street, or coming out of a corner store a block and a half away from the bus stop. She will usually be jumping up and down, or waving her hands, or my personal favorite, whistling. Whereas you’re kind of obligated to an extent to wait for Mr. Important, since he is at least within spitting distance of you, Miss Late on the other hand is often left to wait for the next bus. Par for the course right? Wrong. Here’s what Miss Late will often do; when the next bus does finally come along, Miss Late will for some unknown reason bitch and complain and cry to the driver of that bus about how the bus driver in front of him “blew right past her and didn’t even stop.” Miss Late tends to embellish. But it doesn’t end there my friends. Want to know why Miss Late is usually late? Well, it’s because Miss Late spends most of her time on the phone with the TTC’s complaint department whining her ass off to someone that gets paid to listen to shit like that, as if she really cares. Miss Late doesn’t understand the cardinal rule in life; “People wait for buses, buses don’t wait for people”, or maybe she does and that rule just doesn’t apply to her, I don’t know. What I do know is Miss Late is nothing more than a half a bottle of extra strength Tylenol a week habit. End of story.
Now, this next guy is my favorite guy. We are going to call him Jack Ass. Jack Ass has a problem with everything. Jack Ass, I don’t think anyway, has ever been happy a moment in his life. Jack Ass suffers from a rare disease called “I really should just kill myself”. Jack Ass bitches about everything from the weather to the crowdedness of the bus, as if either are the fault of the bus driver. Regardless of the situation Jack Ass has one argument and one argument only, “I PAY YOUR SALARY!” He’s like Rain Man with that shit, that’s all he says over and over again. Jack Ass can go fuck himself for a few reasons. I find it hard to believe that Jack Ass even pays taxes in the first place, seeing as though Jack Ass is practically always drunk, and usually smells like kangaroo shit. It’s hard to have a job with those two characteristics, and of course without a job you don’t pay taxes, you instead reap the benefits of others (including myself) paying taxes. Meaning, indirectly Jack Ass doesn’t pay my salary, I in fact pay his. But let’s assume Jack Ass does have a job, and does pay taxes, Jack Ass is ignorant. And here’s why. Jack Ass hasn’t picked up a newspaper since the early to mid 90’s apparently, because Jack Ass doesn’t realize that around that time most of the government funding got pulled from the TTC and placed in “more important” areas. IN FACT the TTC is only subsidized to the tune of 20 percent from tax dollars. If I make 30 dollars an hour, and the subsidy for us is 20 percent one would say, “Well in theory he does cover 6 of your dollars per hour”, wouldn’t one? Well that one is wrong. Because simply put, a bus driver isn’t the only thing that percentage covers is it? Everyone from the CEO down to Miss Important’s telephone friends there in the complaint’s department get covered by that 20 percent. How does one quantify exactly how much of his kick in the subsidy covers my share? One can NOT quantify is the answer. How about Jack Ass’s back up plan though, “I buy tokens” or “I paid for my MetroPass so you’re going to accommodate me however I deem fit “. We should really change his name from Jack Ass to Retarded at that point. Tokens, MetroPasses, Tickets, they all make up the other 80 percent of the TTC’s income, yes, but there’s a little thing called operating cost. Your MetroPass buys you a service, and that service is simply, A to B, nothing more. To think that I or any of my co-workers need to listen to your bullshit about anything because the price of a MetroPass is whatever it is (I don’t even know to be honest) is absurd. The reality is this; in this entire world, I answer to two people and two people alone, and the fact that you deposit a token in a fare box does NOT make you one of them. Not by any stretch of the imagination. You want me to listen? You want me to accommodate you? You better ask me real nicely buddy, because the last time I checked Jack Ass over there didn’t give birth to me and isn’t fucking me at night, which means he isn’t one of the two. So I’m neither obligated to listen nor answer, plain and simple. Any thinking to the contrary will be handled in the typical fashion that Jack Ass’s get handled and escalation is purely dependent upon Jack Ass’s level of boredom/stupidity. I wanted to tell you about a few other people, like Mr. I Just Refuse To Get My Shit Together, or Mrs. Stop The Bus Here Because I’m Too Lazy To Walk A Block And A Half, but unfortunately it’s getting late and I have to get to work soon. So to the Filipino factory workers, the thugs that give me pounds on the way off the bus, all the around the way girls that wink and smile at me (you have to stop that by the way, my girlfriends crazy and she WILL come for you), the skinny guy that works at the cable plant, the guy that always just says “proper”, the Costco ladies, and the Amica nurses, and anyone else that makes up the 65 percent, I’m on my way, I’ll see you all in a bit. And to the condescending piss poor morally, miserable with your life remaining 35 percent, you know the hashtag…………………………….. #FuckOuttaHere
I’ll see you all in a couple weeks guys, until then, hang in there………………………….
