You know you need to get to work in an hour, and work is way off campus. Uber is too expensive, you don’t have time to walk, and nope–you don’t have a car on campus. Guess you’re out of luck.
But have no fear, the metro bus is here. Actually, it probably isn’t. Sure google maps says it was supposed to arrive five minutes ago, but there’s no doubt in my mind you’ll have to wait another 25 minutes for it to arrive—minimum.
It’s that point of the year where it’s just cold enough at night that you always kick yourself for forgetting mittens. Your fingers, patiently gripping your bus pass, start to freeze. The clock is ticking, and you only have 35 minutes to get to work on time. Finally, you can see the lights of the #2 come rolling down the street towards your stop. At the last second, it slams the breaks to pick you up.
With 28 minutes to go, you’re finally on the bus. But where to sit? Do you pick the group of chatty friends in the back?
How about you take a seat next to the person with the teardrop tattoo twirling his lip ring with his pierced tongue?
You decide to play it safe and take the seat as close to the driver as possible. Good call. Until a man who gets on the bus two stops later is talking to himself. Calmly and subtly you put your earbuds in—the universal sign for “Don’t speak to me.”
But of course, he doesn’t take the hint. And he probably says something like this to you from across the aisle…
You have no idea what he’s talking about, so you just give a little smile and put your head down for the rest of the trip. Only 10 minutes until you’re supposed to be at work.
While tuning out the man trying to get your attention across the aisle, you tuned out the automated voice recording of the upcoming stops. Yup, you just missed your stop, and all you can do is watch it fly by out the window.
Five minutes late, confused, and scared, you finally get off the bus two blocks away from where you were supposed to. Next time, you have a better game plan.
So…maybe the Uber is worth it after all.