Government Departments, Phone Tag and Secret Fax Numbers
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@Someone You Know said:
I mean, yeah, the wheelchair lifts were a major pain in the ass and broke all the time, and they put you behind schedule even when they worked correctly, but fuck, that's your job.
Job aside, what kind of a complete dick sees providing transportation to the handicapped as a burden? Christ. When I was in Auckland, I didn't recall the bus drivers being absolute human filth, but maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention.
Anyway, ditto here. Actually, a bus driver who left a wheelchair waiting would probably be mobbed by the passengers before he had a chance to get fired. (In fact, I was on a bus at Everett Station that had a unreliable lift that wasn't working-- it was the passengers who insisted the driver keep trying, even though the route was already late, and cheered when the lift finally got unstuck.)
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@Spectre said:
How would they detect that?
Well you need to understand that americans have evolved in the harsh legal wasteland that is the USA today and in adapting have developed new sensors such as the liability antenna (which evolved from the "somebody is about to screw me" gut feeling)
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@Spectre said:
@Someone You Know said:
I used to be a bus driver. Where I worked, a driver deliberately not stopping for a wheelchair passenger would be grounds for immediate termination. Immediate, as in, pulled off the bus and someone else comes out to finish your shift.
How would they detect that?
We have this amazing new technology called "the telephone." You should get some in your country, it's really quite remarkable.
In this case, the person left at the curb could "telephone" the bus company and inform them of what happened. Given the route number and time, the bus company can look up what driver it is and react appropriately. Alternatively, one of the other passengers on the bus could "telephone" the bus company.
(Seriouosly? "How would they detect that?")
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@blakeyrat said:
"How would they detect that?"
The bus has INS and radar similar to that of the F-16. A wheelchair has a unique radar signature which the radar is trained to track. The on-board management system which tracks the buses position and time on target will send a SOAP request to a web service without a schema over an EDGE radio link if the heat signature of the chair is passed at a speed not conducive with the bus being capable of stopping. The web request is interpreted by a desktop interactive windows service running as SYSTEM which uses DCOM to invoke the legacy COM API that was in MSN Messenger which causes the shift supervisor to go over to the old 486 in the corner running the access 2.0 employee database.
After waiting four minutes for the machine to boot, and a further two for access to complete the query, the result is sent by email to the regional manager who converts it to a PDF, prints it, signs it and scans it back in. He emails the resulting Bitmap to his manager, who upon seeing the signature of his underling will print it in A3, place the enlarged printout on a large wooden table and stamp the printout with a large red stamp reading F I R E D. He will then boot his 486 and wait six minutes, after which he will click a command button in access which triggers a SOAP message which when received by the bus will isolate the drivers cabin area and release carbon monoxide, when it has reached the appropriate levels, the buses information system will display an appoligy stating that "technical problems" mean that they will have to remain stationary until the chopper carrying the new driver arrives. At that point, driver passengers and corpse make haste for the bus terminal where the bidy is removed, passengers transfered to other buses, and the bus throughly cleaned of all this unpleasantness
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@crippledsmurf said:
... awesome application of technology ...
Can we implement that here, damn I would pay to watch that along with the flying kid, makes for an excellent YouTube video
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@blakeyrat said:
Job aside, what kind of a complete dick sees providing transportation to the handicapped as a burden? Christ. When I was in Auckland, I didn't recall the bus drivers being absolute human filth, but maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention.
I've heard that the place where I worked — a bus company run by a university and staffed largely by students — is unusual among U.S. transit agencies in that most people working there liked their jobs and gave a shit about what they were doing. The minority who didn't fit that description were known as "clipboards". You only knew they existed because you saw their name on the clipboard in the bus that listed who was driving each shift. They tended to not last very long — not that we fired a lot of people, but people who didn't fit in tended to realize it and move on fairly quickly.
Other transit agencies seem to have a higher proportion of such people, and they tend to stick around longer. I always thought it was at least partially because we were college students driving part-time to pick up extra cash, while bus drivers in general are usually family-supporting blue-collar types who can't afford (or think they can't afford) to take the risk of quitting a job they don't like.
