Even the most efficient systems can fall apart when people stop paying attention.

When a bus driver’s designated stop kept getting blocked, they decided to followed through on a warning no one thought they’d keep.

And once they did, people finally started listening.

Read on for the full story.

I left 40 guys standing in the rain after a 12 hr shift.

Up until fairly recently, I worked as a camp bus driver in a major industrial area.

They describe their day-to-day.

What my duties were, was to pick people up from the camp (where they lived for a certain amount of time — I was two weeks in, one week out) and take them into the plant and drop them off at a variety of drop-off areas (depending on what their job was), then pick up anyone that was returning to the camp for their rest period.

Now, there were certain designated areas for the buses to pick up and drop off (you know, a bus stop), and only buses were supposed to be parked in those areas.

But there was a glaring problem that just wasn’t getting solved.

The issue was that people would keep parking their work pickup in the bus areas and block us off.

We kept asking them not to do that.

They kept doing it.

Finally, leadership caught wind of the issue, but ultimately refused to take action to fix it.

Eventually it all boiled over when a higher-up in the company started giving us grief over picking people up out of the designated areas (because people kept blocking the areas with pickups).

We explained why we did it, and the higher-up promised to do something about it — but never did.

So the problem persisted. This time, one of the bosses had a different idea.

The second time that higher-up gave us grief over picking people up out of our designated areas, my manager told us (the bus drivers) that the next time this happened, we should let him know via radio and then just leave.

So that’s what I did.

To be fair, the bus driver gave passengers warning.

Now, we didn’t just spring this on our passengers.

We made sure that every single one of them knew that the next time it was blocked off, the bus would just continue on its way and leave them behind.

But of course, they decided not to listen.

When I spread the news to my passengers, I heard a lot of laughter and could tell that they didn’t believe me.

However, the next day, it happened again.

So the bus driver followed through on their word.

There were pickups in our areas once again, and like the good little minion I was, I did as I was directed: got on the radio to my manager, let him know what was happening, and left.

I understand that there was a number of interesting phone calls afterwards.

This solution finally worked!

But we never had a problem with pickups in our areas afterwards.

These passengers thought the bus would always wait for them — until it didn’t.

What did Reddit have to say?

Sometimes, you just have to make people care.

Many industries can relate to the pain of conversations like these.

When folks don’t respond to reason, sometimes you have to take things a step further.

Causing chaos is often the best way to get upper-management’s attention.

Turns out, nothing motivates change like missing your ride.

Once the wheels stopped turning for them, the message finally got through.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.