Have you ever wondered what small decisions in your life have ultimately led to you panting, heart racing, at a bus stop, staring as a vital transport vehicle takes off at the speed of light? Your last chance to get to your O-Chem lecture on time speeds away and you’re powerless. Just drenched in torrential rain destroying your $200 textbook you haven’t used since September but lug around “just in case.”
Or what prompted a 40-year-old man to scream at you as a freshman for attempting to swipe a bus pass when you didn't need to? Rest assured, nothing you have ever done, or will ever do, could have prevented it. 80 Bus Drivers are, in fact, trained from birth to hate 18 to 22-year-olds.
Metro Transit recruits these drivers by scanning hospital birth registries and picking out the meanest-sounding baby names. (Think Dirk, Tucker, Buzz, and Lisa.) As toddlers, they are given toy buses and model young adults and encouraged to hit as many as possible per push. A scientist comes to make biannual check-ins to assess their progress.
At six years old, they are packed into fraternity parties to condition them to the experience of being in close proximity to hoards of wasted 18-year-olds. Every winter from age seven to eleven, they undergo empathy reduction training, shadowing a current 80 driver to learn the callous art of ignoring students in polar vortexes.
They are given special permission at age 12 to obtain a Class B Permit to practice driving large vehicles without the inhibitions of a further developed prefrontal cortex. At age 16, the City of Madison buys them a lifetime supply of cigarettes so that their yelling voice is always hoarse and they possess an eternal excuse to stop at Memorial Union for 7.5 minutes more than they need to.
When they finally commence bus driver training, these select few are fast-tracked through the Metro Transit system to the elite 80 routes, leaving the weak and friendly drivers-to-be on the lame low-numbered buses.
Long story short, you did nothing wrong. You did nothing to deserve the 80 blowing through your stop and ruining your entire day. That driver didn’t want to deal with your bullshit, and the rest of us simply aren’t built strong enough to stop them. If you want friends, ride the 4 or 6.
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