After a nice, relaxing week of school and work, why not top it off with a 16-hour workday on Friday? It seemed like a good idea to me at the time. In any case, I decided to sell my soul to work for 16 hours on Friday. I work for Unitrans, the big red bus system in Davis, transporting everybody to class. I just recently got hired as a supervisor so now I am lucky enough to be the guy who makes sure everyone is on time. At 5:05 on Friday morning, I was woken up by my alarm and I dragged myself to work. From 5:20 till 3:45 in the afternoon, I sat in the dispatch center, trying my hardest to make the buses run on time (Sorry if your bus was late by the way :( ) After doing that, it was on to Tipsy Taxi in the evening. Tipsy Taxi is a service where people call in from 10 pm-2 am on weekend evenings to request a pickup in one of our four vans running. Talking with drunk people on the phone is a good time, but then cleaning up their puke from the van isn't so much of a good time. I dispatched vans and answered phones at Tipsy Taxi from 9:15 till 3:00.
Some of the highlights from working for Unitrans in the morning are the drivers that sleep through their alarms, leaving the dispatcher scrambling to find someone to drive. It is not a welcome phone call at 6:25 in the morning: "Ughhh..Hello?"
"Hey Gary, it's Forest from Dispatch. I had you down for a start up this morning ten minutes ago...." "OH S@!%!!! I'm so sorry!!!!!! I just slept through my alarm!" Or even better they don't pick up their phone, and you have to find someone to drive a line that starts in fifteen minutes. After the first hour of scrambling and phone calls, things started to calm down. Things stayed that way until later in the day, when a bus missed a turn and kept going another half-mile. "Hey Dispatch, so....I just missed my turn." It is not a welcome call on the radio, leading to re-routes and a late bus. After that, the highpoint (or low point if you were a passenger waiting) was when a bus that was supposed to pick up passengers decided to go back to the terminal instead of picking any of the passengers waiting to go back to campus, leaving unknown numbers of furious people waiting on the J line (I apologize), and many questions being asked. Tipsy Taxi later was more relaxed. Sample phone call follows:
Me: Tipsy Taxi.
Drunk Guy/Girl: HELLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! Is this, like, Tipsy Taxi?!?
Me: It sure is.
Drunk: Can we, like, get a ride for four of us to, (yelling to friends) where are we going? La Salle!
Me: Sure, 4 to La Salle. Where are you?
Drunk: UHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...like, I think...South Davis?
Me: ............
Fun times and getting paid bank!
So, the lessons here are “don’t bite of more than you can chew” and “change as situations change.” The use of dialogue towards the bottom is very effective. I can picture a tape recorder in the background and the words are heard and seen popping up on the screen like on a news report. It would be great if the reader had more sensory detail because I know what you are doing but where are you doing it. Describe the building, your work area, heck even describe what you wear. I tell you to do this because I am getting an image of you wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled up and coffee cup in hand peering over a control panel and scrabbling to make phone calls in a control center underground, you know like in movies. Well I sounds like its hard work but it must also be fun. It must be so rewarding knowing that drunk people will count on you to find them (especially with specific turn-by-turn directions).
ReplyDeleteI know alot of people who work for Unitrans and I've heard stories from them about how much work the job can be sometimes. Although I must say that I have wondered what it was like to drive the double decker bus for a while.
ReplyDelete@ Ronan: Crouched over a computer is an accurate description :)
ReplyDelete@ Jterrado: No power steering and screaming to be heard on the radio over the roar of the engine. It is pretty awesome though because there are so few of them in the world.