What we'd REALLY like to say (in complaint letters to Greyhound)

A fun break from all that political talk today, children.
Everything below in BlUE is the whole truth of the situation. The black text is what got sent to Customer Service.

February 12, 2008
Dear Customer Service Rep.:
On Friday, February 8th, I rode the 2:30PM Greyhound from the Port Authority in NY to Boston, MA's South Station. I should have recognized the ominous aspect of such a journey, what with the crazy disheveled old men lurking by the doors as self-appointed panty-grabbers, and the brick wall corners heaped with what appeared to be living advertisements for intravenous drug use. At around 3:30PM, our bus broke down on an overpass in Brooklyn. (this was near the entrance to "Throgs Neck Bridge." Definition: TO THROG: verb, "to abandon all hope of punctuality while sitting in abject fear of plummeting below while swaying on a precipice for at least two hours.") Our driver called for a replacement bus, which we were told would arrive in twenty minutes. (We think you know what "twenty minutes" means. No matter the estimate, if for love-making or waiting time - both estimates are either widely over- or under- estimated. We conclude that the actual time period of "twenty minutes" simply does not exist. There is a vortex that eats all ability to sustain one activity or alternatively complete one activity, and that vortex begins/ends around the 20-minute-mark. Results of tests are inconclusive as to the reason for this phenomenon.)

After an hour, there was no replacement bus, but our own bus started again, and the engine worked. (Eureka!) However, the driver insisted (rightly or wrongly) to wait for the replacement. Another hour passed, with no new bus in sight. (or in smell, touch, taste, etc., though the resulting olfactory nerve damage of Throgs Neck was beginning to develop into a dour, nasally aggravating ordeal.) The passengers in the bus repeatedly asked our driver to call the driver of the other bus and find out what was taking so long. The passenger’s entreaties ranged from "please call" to "fucking call the greyhound people, goddamit." Finally, he agreed, and after waiting for two hours on the overpass, our driver realized he told the other driver the wrong route number, and the other bus was all the way in White Plains. Of course none of the passengers realized his mistake, because his language was just on the cusp of possibly sounding like something that might be confused for English in perhaps a place like Bangladesh. At this point, our driver decided to DRIVE our bus to meet the other bus halfway. Who knew a broken bus could work so well? After getting to an exit on a new highway near White Plains, we proceeded to wait over an hour again on the side of an exit, waiting for the other bus. The "Exit 19" sign was taunting us from our itchy polyester seats. We were lost in a transportational limbo on the shoulder of the road. We were shouldering the prospect of thinking that even when this new bus does arrive, we will have to sit in traffic for at least another three or four hours. Now I know how Virgil and all the pre-Christian poets and philosophers must have felt in Dante's Inferno. At least Dante got to travel through hell, which implies movement. Our hell on wheels was perhaps all the more hellish due to it's palsied state.

We finally boarded the new bus around 7PM. (Remember, we had left NY at 2:30PM, and we were now (at 7PM) only 45 minutes away from where we started, yet almost FIVE hours had passed.) We did not arrive at Boston's South Station until after 10PM that night.

I am deeply upset that all the passengers had to go through this ordeal, and that the bus driver was utterly incompetent and irrational. It was a horrible experience; I hope Greyhound rectifies the problems that caused it. I would also like to let you know that I will be taking alternate transportation other than Greyhound on future occasions, and telling everyone I know to do the same. Though we will tell everyone of greyhound's negligence, unfortunately it's still the cheapest, so eventually we'll all have to ride your urine-soaked excuse for a perambulator again. I truly hope you do something to prevent this from happening to another group of your travelers. Truly. But we know better than to expect it.Thanks for your time and consideration, you good-for-nothing national ambassadors of ambulatory destruction and frustration. You acted with less concern for basic human decency than a Republican nominee who mistakenly wanders into a gay rights rally or a workers union meeting would. Get a clue.

Have your say: http://www.greyhound.com/home/en/CustomerAssistanceRequest.aspx