Some People Must Be Very Hurt Inside

I was having a wonderful Saturday until a bus driver decided to tell me off for standing in the wrong place. Why do people do that?

Earlier, I'd vacuumed my flat after a couple of hours of satisfactory writing and was ready to brave the outside world. I had a couple of Marks & Spencer food offers I wanted to use so I had a good excuse. Usually, I'd walk the three miles to the top of the hill to the retail park but it was cold and I didn't fancy getting all sweaty.

Once I'd got into my stride, I compromised. Rather than going to the nearby bus station, I decided to walk farther up the hill and along a chilly sunlit street to get some much-needed vitamin D.

At the next nearest bus stop, I realised the paper timetable was probably out of date due to the current third lockdown. So I looked up options on Google. When nothing had arrived at the time the oracle had shown, I looked around and spotted an electronic timetable. Excellent, I thought and strolled over to it.

As I was checking the arrivals board, it was a mere ten metres away from the bus stop I had been waiting at, I turned my head round to check whether any buses were coming only to see three identical Stagecoach buses about to roar past!

The first one wasn't the one I needed but as soon as the number appeared for the second one, I shot my hand out to wave it down! The driver checked his mirror, indicated and pulled in to where I was standing. I waited the usual eternity for the coach door to drag itself open and clambered up the double-height steps. "Hello, thanks so much for stopping!" I said.

"You're at the wrong bus stop," he said.

"I was just checking the arrivals board, there isn't one next to the correct bus stop."

"You need to be at the right bus stop."

Thinking to placate him rather than reply, I know but ..., I said, "I am really really really grateful you pulled over."

Flustered and embarrassed by my submission, I plonked my phone against the payment reader to use my Google Pay facility prematurely. I hadn't even said where I wanted to go!

"Chapel Level, please." Forgetting to add that I wanted a return ticket.

"There was another bus right behind me, you could have caught that one," he said, as he entered the details into his machine.

Biting back, well I couldn't see that one, could I? I tapped my phone against the reader and ripped my ticket from the machine. After all, he did pull in to let me on. What I hadn't expected was to be told off by a man my age.

He had just laid into me. Wrong bus stop. Could have caught the other bus, blah blah blah. I sat down in the completely empty bus and blubbed. Very messy in a mask.

What is this need some people have to make others feel small? What was his rush to zoom past one of the few bus stops his bus stops at, and then tell off his one passenger?

My conclusion was that he doesn't like his job much and I should feel sorry for him.

When I got off, I thanked him as sweetly as I could. Bastard for making me cry. Yet there is an element of success here. I have proven I am capable of not retaliating to others' thoughtless comments. This is something I have been working on for years.

The anti-depressants are working. Kind of.