Tuesday 11 December 2012

In chains

Since I wasn't really sure what to do today, I decided the best thing to do was just to show up at 6am this morning and figure out what to do. And that's when I learnt they had thought about giving me an evening shift! Funny... But, since I was there, I might as well get on one of the buses and learn some new routes. And then at 9am they wanted me to join a group of drivers getting a small course in how to put on snow chains. Because it mightn't happen that often, but it still could that there was so much snow that you did need to put on snow chains.

It took some time for the instructor to finally show up, but he made it finally and then he got to work. He showed us how to do it, some of the others disappeared due to their work schedules and I was left together with Mr Slinger. He had put on snow chains countless times before, but of course I had never done so. Well, I got going and after about half an hour I finally had the chain on. Not very tight admittedly, but it was on. I then took it off again, cleared everything away and actually drove the bus (all of 200 meters, if that) to the parking lot. 

But that wasn't the only thing I did today, I actually sold my first tickets today. As the regular driver was outside having a smoke and a banter with another new driver, there were children coming up to the bus that needed to pay. So, I got them to pay and handed them the tickets. It felt really nice to finally do something, since I still have to wait at least a week before I can actually start driving a bus with passengers. 

However, I do know what I have to do the next few days, so that is pretty good. Even though it does involve early mornings, which are not my favourite...

2 comments:

  1. It's nice that you have a lot of time to become familiar with everything, but I can't imagine that putting on chains is any sort of fun.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Way to go on learning to do the tickets and putting on those chains. We don't own any chains but need them if you go into the mountains with the snow. Growing up in Chicago we had snow tires and didn't need chains.

    ReplyDelete

Any weighty (and not so weighty) comments are welcome!