Today I had my first very real and downright awful experience trying to board a bus in Chicago. All of the details are in the letter below. I'm trying to share this on every platform I can because I want it out there. Here's the letter that I wrote to the CTA this morning:
To Whom It May Concern:
I
am writing to complain about the terrible and humiliating experience that I had
while riding the #76 Diversey bus today.
It was very cold, in the low 30s, snowing, and my infant was not in a
good mood. I was just trying my best to
get everyone home quickly. The bus
arrived and I waited back while any senior citizens and peoples with
disabilities boarded. Once the coast was
clear the few remaining people to board politely motioned for me to board. I
went to get on the bus and the bus driver very crossly told me that I needed to
break down my stroller. I told him that
was fine but I needed to board the bus first because it was cold and I needed a
place to set my baby while I broke it down.
He kept yelling at me to break everything down before boarding. The few
people waiting kept insisting to the bus driver to let me board with the
baby. I went to get the stroller up into
the bus and the driver actually started pulling
the bus forward!!! He completely
endangered my baby and no one could believe that he did that.
It was very difficult, but I managed to break
everything down on my own and finally get boarded. The driver continued to be
verbally aggressive. It was not rush
hour, the bus was not crowded and the smaller handicapped section of the bus was
available for the stroller. He still
continued to lecture me about the stroller and threatened that I had better not
even think about opening it back up or
else. So I very awkwardly had to set
my baby’s car seat on one of the chairs while the folded up stroller was
leaning in the handicapped section. This
forced me to take up a total of 4 seats.
If the driver had just let me on from the beginning with the stroller intact,
I would have only taken up 2 seats. So
this driver endangered my baby, verbally attacked me, and purposefully delayed
other passengers boarding just because he wanted to have some sort of power
trip. It was incredibly
humiliating. I consider myself a
reasonable and understanding person. If
it had been rush hour or a bus that was crowded, I would understand. If there wasn’t any space in the handicapped
section, I would understand. If I had an
older child who could walk or sit in my lap, I would understand. If my baby was old enough it sit in a forward
facing stroller without a car seat attachment that was easy to break down on my
own, I would understand. If I had someone
with me to assist me in breaking everything down, I would understand. If the bus driver was friendly and willing to
offer assistance to a mom trying to board a bus with an angry infant all by
herself, I would understand. This bus
driver really just wanted to see me suffer and was rude, threatening and
unapologetic. I am extremely
disappointed in the CTA for hiring such an unbelievable individual. When I got home to tell my fiancé what had
happened he knew exactly which driver
it was and told me that he had also had the misfortune of trying to board with
this driver. The first time my fiancé
encountered this individual, the driver was so blatantly rude about my fiancé
boarding that he was forced to walk all of the way home. The next time the driver forced my fiancé to
wait while he let about 20 people board the bus before him. That is not how you treat someone with an
infant. It’s disgusting and I cannot
believe that this person is being allowed to treat passengers in this way.
It is very
difficult to sit down and write this as I know that my letter will probably be
thrown away or filed with all of the other complaints and nothing will come of
it -- because hey, you’re just doing your job and you get to clock out at 5,
right? I am begging you to reconsider. I’m not a bad person. I’m not an aggressive or angry individual. I’m a new mom who works full time and
averages about 3 hrs-4 hrs of sleep a night.
I depend on the CTA to get around the city and to get from point A to
point B with my baby. I shouldn’t be
harassed by my bus driver in the process.
If you have ever had children, you should understand that navigating the
city with a baby isn’t easy. I implore
you to look into this issue and take action on it. There are a lot of parents like me who are
just trying to get their babies home safely.
For reference
this was the #76 Diversey bus heading west.
The bus number was 6724. The
intersection was at Clark and Diversey and the incident occurred at
approximately 10:30AM on April 4th, 2016. The driver was a large, older,
African-American male. The driver’s
badge number was 45506. Thank you for
taking the time to read this.
