The People Who Hate Us: Bus Drivers

Rob Fox13 years ago

Some people hate Greeks. It’s inevitable that, no matter what kind of organization you are a part of, someone is not going to like you. This is an examination of different people whose interactions with fraternity men and sorority women are, for the most part, extraordinarily negative.

There are those who harbor an irrational dislike for Greek Life. They’re idiots. They generally view us from afar and have ill informed opinions based more off of what they’ve heard—and chose to believe without hesitation—than any real interactions. Bus drivers are not these people. Bus drivers have seen the absolute worst of us. They know, better than most outsiders, the drunken horrors we are capable of, and they experience them in a confined space. They’ve been in the shit, and they’ve got to fucking hate us.

To be fair, I sort of assume that bus drivers hate most of the people they are forced to interact with in their profession. Their job is to transport screaming children or liquored up bums or decrepit old people who struggle to even get themselves on and off the bus. The problem is that when bus drivers have to deal with Greeks, we’re sort of all three combined.

Everyone on the bus to and from a party is shouting their heads off, even the guy getting the OTPHJ. After all, a mobile rubdown isn’t a good enough reason to keep you from shout singing your fraternity’s song. Fraternal pride > a pleat palmer. The only person not screaming is the guy passed out upside down on top of the wheel well, but some other asshole is making up for his silence by screaming “WAKE UP BITCH” twice as loud. I’m pretty sure there’s at least one bus driver out there who could be triggered into a murderous rage simply by hearing a shrill chorus of sorority girls start up with “KAPPA DELTAS DO NOT DRINK!” or some other obnoxious sorority drinking song.

Obviously every fratter and sorostitute on the bus is hammered. Absolutely, positively, dead eyed drunk. Drunk enough, as mentioned above, to get and give HJ’s (and more). So drunk in fact that no one seems to mind that their sexual exploits are taking place where possibly only hours earlier innocent children were sitting. The “it crowd” in junior high wouldn’t think they were so cool for hanging at the back of the bus if they realized that their precious seats had been errantly frosted with DNA.

On the way to whatever function everyone is being transported to most of the bus’ occupants are pounding drinks. In my experience bus drivers have varying levels of tolerance for this. Some are cool with it because they realize there is no point in fighting a losing battle. Others try to strictly enforce a “no alcohol on the bus” policy. I assume it’s because they don’t feel like cleaning up a hundred beer cans and withered bladders of wine. Understandable, but their goal of a clean bus is as realistic as their lofty dreams of completing that University of Phoenix degree.

We leave quite the party mess on the way to a function. Of course that’s nothing compared to the destruction sown on the way back. It’s the type of mess typically seen in a Guatemalan truck stop restroom, all that’s missing is a dead chicken and a greasy broken condom filled with heroin. There has to be few things more frustrating than, after a long and annoying night of work, checking your side mirrors at 2:00am and seeing a disembodied head violently purging out of a window fifteen rows back. Somehow by the time the bus gets back that guy’s dinner will already be too encrusted on the side of the bus to wash away with a hose alone.

A bus driver’s patience is literally under a constant barrage from every angle. On one end of the bus thirty people are pouring out of the emergency exit even though they were explicitly instructed not to. Meanwhile up at the front everyone abandoned some 19-year-old in a booze coma who’s slouched over like a sack of potatoes and about six minutes away from wetting himself. It’s bound to be a bad night when there are simultaneous problems with people exiting the bus AND not exiting the bus.

I feel for the bus drivers, I really do. Greeks aren’t necessarily on their worst behavior when being transported to and from a party, but it’s consistently poor. The real problem is that all those heinous shenanigans are concentrated into a small, loud, inescapable space. Oh bus drivers, you poor bastards. I’d apologize for all us, but I doubt any words of mine will comfort you while you’re impatiently waiting for some drunk, snarky frat guy to tuck up his hard on and get the fuck off your bus with his date.