Bus Break

Riders Beware: If the bus route goes past a casino, don't be surprised if your bus "suddenly breaks down"-- at least that was the case for Brent Usry's son . Now, if I hadn't had my own terrible customer service experience with Greyhound, I may have looked at this claim with a bit more skepticism...But as Chris Argyris maintains in the Ladder of Inference, our beliefs often short circuit reality. in this case, nothing that Greyhound does would  surprise me in the least.

Here's what we know. Brent Usry's son took the Greyhound. from Las Vegas to California.

Fourty Five Minutes Later.... My cell phone rings. It is my son he was ranting about the stupid bus driver and air conditioning. I said "What are you saying, it is 107 degrees and he is not running the air conditioning?" He said no "he is running it full blast and we have over heated 3 times." I said "Is it hot in the bus" he said "No it is freezing".

"Why is he running it so cold?"  He said; "We had Just past Whiskey Petes Casino and he called and said the bus was having problems and they sent him back to whiskey petes to wait an hour for a new bus."

He said; "Now he is joking about everyone having some gambling time, and I think he did this on purpose. He said it has happend to him a lot." My son stayed outside while everyone else headed into the casino. (he is only 17 and there is not much for a 17 year old to do in a casino.

According to blogger Usry, in checking with other folks, "stateline casinos give a lot of perks to bus drivers who bring in big loads of people."

As blogger Usry says in his post, he doesn't know what really happened....maybe it was a bad bus --maybe it was a bus driver who wanted to spend the afternoon at the casino.

The reason people suspect that the technical problems could have been human induced is that Greyhound has a culture that invites its customers to think the worst of them. how proud they must be.

So, do Greyhound buses regularly break down at casinos? Or was this just a case of a bus driver joking around and feeling thankful that they broke down at the casino instead of the Barnes and Noble.

Image Credit: Flickr member Ian Fuller