Welcome to Nowhere

I should have taken this morning as an indication. First, as I said last night one of the buses I need for my insanely early shift doesn’t run as early as I need it to, so I’ve had to improvize my way through figuring that out. Needless to say it worked, I’m still alive, and all is well. But it still should have been an indication. And then, when the bus driver apparently couldn’t find my stop near the office (it’s that hard to miss?), I should have been paranoid. Even if he *did* end up just making it easier on me and dropping me off at the corner instead. But no, I continued to be unsuspecting. Now, here’s where I get the good old fashion disclaimer out. I don’t mind foreign people in the slightest. In fact, conversationally, I have absolutely no problem with them. Professionally, as well, so long as I’m not the poor soul who has to deal with it on a daily basis. Well, I get on the bus to come home, I must have told him the stop I need to get off at about 5 or 6 times. This guy has an accent, presumeably Indian or so but I’m a poor judge of accents, but that doesn’t even raise the usual red flags with me. The telling him 5 or 6 times was a little irritating, but I was willing to just let it go since the bus *was* fairly crowded. He may not have heard me. But apparently he did, all 5 or 6 times. And when we’ve gone a ways past it, he finally admitted he couldn’t see the stop. *That* irritated me to no end. My first thought was he was new to the route, or to the job, even, but someone else quickly disproved that theory by signalling in advance they wanted to get off at the next stop we were passing. And wouldn’t you know, he just about missed that one, too. I was gonna say something, but the guy who’s stop almost got missed beat me to the punch, so I figured I’d be nice. This time. All told, I ended up about 20 minutes out of my way, waiting for the bus that goes in the other direction so I could actually get back to my stop. Now, again, I have all kinds of respect for the foreign folk. Really, I do. But it’s stupid fucking morons like that that really make me reflexively cringe when I hear an accent that almost resembles the Quicky Mart guy off the sympsons. I may not be able to see, but assuming, just for the sake of argument, he actually *was* new, did it really not occur to him to ask? I know which side of the road the street it’s nearest to is on, I know how far past that street the stop is, *and* I know how long it takes me to get from said stop to my apartment, roughly. Not counting a couple minutes here and there if I get turned around. I really like living in Ottawa, and I do like their transit system, but sometimes, I really, really despise their transit system.