Imagine being a bus driver. Your shift is over, and it’s time to park the bus for the night. If the rules required a backup person to be working in the parking lot to help you park the bus, what would you do if that person’s job were eliminated?

It may sound ridiculous to eliminate a job that is required according to the rules, but that’s what happened in this story.

Keep reading to see the chaos that ensued.

You wrote the rules!

This goes back to my days working at a large Public Transit authority.

They stressed safety at every point related to moving buses. Particularly within the depot and outside parking lots.

We had 250 buses. As you can imagine moving large vehicles around in tight spaces can be hard on buses, infrastructure and people.

There were rules when parking the buses.

The layout for our outside lot required about 50 buses to be backed in. Two rows of 25 nose to tail.

Rules required that when backing a bus we always had to have a “backup helper.” For obvious reasons, backing 15 ton vehicles into other 15 ton vehicles can lead to mayhem. Especially after dark and in poor weather.

Management decided they didn’t want to pay someone to stand around and do this.

There were 6 shifters. (Operators working the yard to move buses after they pulled in. Parked for the night, or moved to maintenance) Rules state you NEVER leave a bus unattended. If it’s running someone is in the seat.

The problem escalated quickly.

First night, first bus goes outside and calls the yard dispatcher for help.

Yard dispatcher ignores them.

Next bus, same thing.

After the 6th bus arrives in the yard waiting for backup help the line for pullins was 10 deep around the block and all the shifters were in the yard.

They realized they needed a backup guy after all.

The neighborhood hates the depot anyway. Calls to police begin about buses blocking the streets.

Yard dispatcher is flipping out.

The backup guy was back within the hour. On overtime for the balance of the pick (about 3 months) since management had eliminated the job. It usually went to an operator on restricted duty for whatever reason.

They wrote the rules. Not our job to ignore them.

At least they learned their lesson quickly. They weren’t just paying someone to stand around. It was actually a really important job.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person shares their opinion.

Another person learned a lesson about bus and truck drivers.

This person knows that it can be tricky to back up a bus.

One person shares a note about emphasizing a pretty important line in the story.

You can’t eliminate a job that’s required by the rules.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.