"He called me a plonker!"

Yet more care in the community travelling on my bus today.

A lady with a free bus pass (orange stripe down the side, meaning the holder has a disability that precludes them from attaining a car driving licence) boarded in the town centre. She asked if I was Route B. I said not and that I was Route A. Until January, Routes A and B ran alternatively, but then changes were made and Route B was cancelled and Route A increased to double the frequency to compensate.

She said that she needed to be on a road that Route B used to serve. I told her that her only option now is to catch me (Route A) and change onto Route C that would take her the remainder of the way. The connection point is only 0.5 miles from the road she wants to be, but she had shopping and didn't pay to use the bus, so I suspected she'd be happy to wait 15 minutes, rather than walk the distance in 10 mins.

She sat down. Off we went.

Half-an-hour later, an old chap shouted out to me: "Driver! Driver!" I slowed from 50mph to respond. He said that a lady claims she's got on the wrong bus and wants to know where you're taking her. Oh, if only it had been my last day with the company, there are so many ways in which I could have answered that!

You can, of course, guess who the cretin was. That's right, the "Are you a Route B?" lady.

I could hear her telling everyone a pack of lies. "He said to just stay on and he would drop me off where I wanted." as well as "Where is he taking me? He's going to strand me miles from home!"

I shouted back that I would sort it out at the next major stop (6 mins away) and that there was nothing I could do about it now. I carried on, ignoring the verbal diarrhoea that was being spouted.

And do you know what this woman was most concerned about? Her bloody frozen chicken might defrost before she got home.

As I was nearing the next major point (where I would put her on the next bus in the opposite direction), I could hear she was making a phone call to someone, who must have offered to collect her. As she finished the call, she said to the person next to her: "He called me a plonker!" in a very amused manner. She then turned and said precisely the same sentence to everyone individually in the lower saloon: "He called me a plonker!"

This was still going on as she left my bus at the focal point. "He called me a plonker!" She even said it to a chap in a taxi who was collecting an elderly lady. The guy looked at me as if there was something I needed to tell him but sadly there wasn't. I looked at him and put two fingers to my head to imitate a gun's barrel. He understood.

And then it ended. The frozen chicken, I assume, got home before thawing, while The Plonker stood awaiting her lift home.

Common Sense Solution: If passengers cannot understand basic instructions from a driver, along the lines of: to get home you need to catch me to X and then get on another bus there to your house, they should not be allowed on the bus. Imagine if she'd got off where she did and then wandered into a dark alley and collapsed or was attacked and it transpired she was miles from home. I'd be interviewed under caution by the police for sure.