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Hey folks, a couple of week ago, I posted a piece on anonymity in the big city. Here's a quick follow up, which I actually wrote in December of 2010, so again this is a piece coming from the archives. I hope that you enjoy it, and I look forward to your comments, as always.

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            Many years ago, a man named Henry Ford invented the car. Now cars were great things, taking people from place to place quickly and smoothly. Of course, when I say “people,” I mean rich people. Cars were not very affordable when they first came out, and they still aren’t really, though there are two cars for every three people in America these days. However, as not everyone can afford their own car (some people have more than one, just to keep the stats up you know) someone decided that they would invent a really big car for everyone to share. These big public cars, affectionately known as “buses,” would drive a scheduled route through town, picking people up in one place and dropping them off elsewhere.

In the olden days when you wanted to get off the bus, you’d simply walk to the front, turn to the driver and say, “I’d like to get off the bus at the next stop, please,” and the driver would smile at you, pull the bus over and let you off. Buses soon became very popular, picking people up all over the place and getting absolutely packed, so much so that it wasn’t always possible to wade through the human sea to ask the driver to let you off. In response, an ingenious person invented the rope and bell system: when you want to get off the bus, you need not apologetically and excusingly wade all the way to the front and ask the driver. Rather, you can just pull one of the ropes running along the walls of the bus and a bell will ring, indicating to the driver your intention to dismount. Peace and order reigned, and buses everywhere functioned smoothly. People would get on and off the bus with impunity, merrily pulling ropes and ringing bells.

However, buses have fallen on dark times. So often these days I get on a bus and I’m the only one on it, or nearly so. On such occasions, there I sit at the front of a nearly empty bus, which is invariably fullest at the back with people burying themselves in a cell phone or a personal music player of some non-descript description. And when those anonymous back-dwellers want to get off the bus? There’s plenty of space for them to walk to the front and ask the driver to (please) let them off at the next stop, but instead they usually stay at the back and retain their anonymity by pulling the rope and getting off without a word.

            A bus driver is a person, and it’s not tout a fait égal (not all one) to the driver whether you ask them personally to let you off or whether you just ring the bell. Sure, they’ll get the point either way, but that’s not the point. They are strangers, but they are people, too, and as such it makes sense to address them personally rather than impersonally and indirectly. It’s like looking at someone when you talk to them: it’s just common courtesy, and shows respect.

But the rope and bell system has fundamentally altered the nature of the bus driver in the minds of many. The driver is now a function, an automaton, as much part of the mechanism of the bus as the gas pedal, the brake or the bell. Obviously it doesn’t matter to the function how you input the “dismount” command, and so why should we bother addressing the function personally?

            We patrons of the bus systems haven’t been the only ones to embrace the difference either. When I’m on an empty bus, I sit at the front; I make no effort to isolate myself from the unknown Other who sits nearby. In fact, I even make a point of asking the driver to let me off. And that’s where the transformation of the bus driver is fully realised: asking the driver to let me off gets me a very strange look more often than not.

            Not only do the riders of the bus see the driver as part of the inhuman mechanism, but the drivers themselves seem to also. Very odd. Less odd is that bus drivers and patrons are frequently frustrated with one another. Any cock-ups are lost in the ever-widening gap between them, always blamed on the other, and more out of misunderstanding and lack of compassion than anything else.