Rabblerabblerabble

So today I received a lovely little letter from dublin bus informing me that I had 5 days to pay a €50 fine for an unpaid ticket…. Hang on what? For starters my name is Eoin not Gerald. That’s my middle name. Secondly, you claim this is my second warning yet I’m struggling to remember hearing about having to pay a fine at all in the first place. All the ticket inspector told me was that I would have to present a valid student travel card in the Dublin Bus Hq if I wanted to see my card again. So instead I bought a new one. Why bother with the hassle of going there when I’ve much more important things to be doing.

Anyway I don’t want to get too much into that particular situation because I want to resolve it with as little hassle as possible. that won’t stop me from giving out about bus drivers though. Nope, this entire post is dedicated to the slandering of the bus drivers who have pissed me off in the past year as well as giving out a bit about 02. In fact,  I’ll cover O2 first just to get the thieving bastards out of the way.

2 weeks ago I decided to change price plans so that I could get free facebook and twitter as well as free texts because, to be fair, there’s not an awful lot else I use my phone for apart from the occasional phone call or bus blog. None of my phone usage for internet requires much data transferral and realistically, I shouldn’t be spending any more than the €1 a day it costs to use the internet on the occasion that I blog or check my emails on the thing. However, in the last week, I have spent close to €40 because, out of absolutely no where, my credit dive bombs from €2o to €2. It’s not application updates and as far as I’m aware, it’s not facebook or twitter. I’m sure if I were to look at my credit usage again on the O2 website, it would claim the credit was spent on data again but I think that it is highly unfair to customers to give no warning to let them know they are about to go over their data usage limits. About a month and a half ago, a similar thing happened to one of my friends who is on meteor where he lost over €100 due to excessive data usage. Mobile networks should be required to inform a person when they are about to go over the limit of their data usage. So yeah, as much as I’d like to go on and on about what dicks they are for robbing me blind like that, there’s very little I can do about it other than look for a new price plan that suits. That, however will have to wait till I’ve got some free time.

Now back to Dublin Bus. So if you’ve followed my tweets since October, you probably have a fair idea of how pissed off at Dublin Bus I tend to get. There has been at least 5 instances I can remember where I’ve been fucked over by the bus and that’s not including the formerly mentioned case. First off I’ll start with another case this week. I tend to use my time on the bus to rest or blog (occasionally I’ll watch a half of a movie or an episode of what ever tv series it is that I’m watching at the time. yesterday however, I decided that I would use my time to nap. So I stood at the bus stop for about a minute and a number 11 bus pulls around the corner. I hail it down with a few other people, hop on, and settle down to a nice nap at the back of the bus. after close to an hour on the bus, I look up and notice the bus pulling into UCD. Not again! For what must be the millionth time, I had hopped on an 11b before the driver had changed from 11 to 11b on the display. My theory as to why they do this is because the majority of the bus route is the same. However, the side of UCD it stops in leaves my 40 minutes walk away from my home so I had to go back outside and wait a further 15 – 2o minutes for the next 11 to show up. Change your bloody display mister bus driver. not everyone from DCU gets off before UCD!

Another problem some bus drivers seem to have is stopping for passengers. Two such occurrences for me in the last year are as follows. I was walking around the corner from my home to get the bus to college and saw it driving past. The stop was only a short while away and the morning traffic slowed it up significantly so I ran with the assumption that the bus driver would notice me in his mirror and wait for me. As my hand reached out for the bus, I found myself thumping the side of it to try stop him as he pulled off down the road. I managed to keep up with him for a good 3 more stops afterwards before he pulled onto a main road and left me gasping for breath. But after the first and second bus stops with me clearly chasing him in his rear-view mirror you’d think he’d have the decency to pull in for a couple more seconds and wait for me.

The second case was one of a little less energy consumption. I was standing in wait at the bus stop and noticed the 11 bus lined up to round the corner once the traffic lights turned in his favour. I stepped out to the side of the road, held out my hand and hailed him down. I then lowered my arm to find my bus ticket and the bloody bus driver picks up speed leaving me shouting after him in a fit of rage as he drives by without stopping! What did he think I had my hand out for? To play chicken with the bus and lose horribly?

When the bus actually does collect me and ends up being the right one, I occasionally fall asleep and end up at the end of the bus line which to me isn’t such a bad thing since the 11 bus route ends only 10 minutes walk away from my house. But on 2 occasions now in the last 6 months, I’ve found myself waking up on a parked and shut down bus in the Donnybrook Bus Depo. The first of these occurred when I decided to nap on the night link home from a night out in town. I ended up forking out €10 to get a taxi back home because the driver had decided not to bother making sure his bus was empty before returning it to the bus depot. The second time was on the last 11 home for the night. I dozed off about half way home and 40 minutes later found myself awakening in a familiar location. This time I managed to call for a lift home, however, I would have preferred the option of getting off the bus at the end of the line than being left for who ever checks the buses at night to find had I not woken up.

Ok, I’m getting tired and my rant is starting to fade to a small rumble atm so I’m gonna wrap it up here but that does not take away from the anger I feel towards Dublin Bus atm and O2 as well. I’m gonna get some sleep an cool off. ttyl