Off Route

Before we get into this week’s post, I want to say I’d intended to post this last week, but circumstances intervened, and I suppose in a way it took us to a destination in the post that I wasn’t intending to go to, so in a way, it was an ‘off route’

Having said that, it’s been a week since the events, and everyone here is really pleased with the way the country has pulled together, taken things to heart and made huge changes.

On Friday, one week to the second that the attacks started the Muslim call to prayer was heard on every radio station in the country, and everyone began two minutes of silence in honour of the fallen.

Now for those people who might be perturbed at the Muslim call to prayer being heard over the radio, as a Christian, there is very little I can disagree with in the actual call, and the bit I do disagree with I’ve always found my Muslim friends very happy when I explained what I would be praying

“God is Great, God is Great

There are no gods but God, and God is Great.

(This part I have changed to what I would pray, and the Muslims still believe this!) And Jesus is THE WORD OF GOD.

To me, that’s the most powerful thing we could do, to stand together and remember those who fell.

Now onto my planned post as I think we went far enough ‘off route’

The Originally planned post

 

That’s a phrase I hear quite a bit in my regular job.

It usually means someone’s ‘dropped a clanger’ as they say in my home country and they ‘ain’t where they should be’ or maybe they are where they should be, but didn’t use the correct route to get there?

And it can be a challenge getting back onto the correct route!

See, driving a bus, you have a set route to drive, but things happen. A moment’s distraction, being given wrong instructions or worse confusing instructions and, well let’s just say chaos can ensue!

Anything from being down a one-way street with the end blocked off and no way to turn around (remember a bus is a lot bigger than a car) to heading miles out of the way and no clue where you’re actually going!

We do have a rule that when that happens you’re supposed to pull over to the side of the road and give operations a call, but firstly that’s easier said than done, and secondly, there’s a good chance they might not know the streets anyway!

A few months ago I was driving one of the regional routes. There’d been an accident outside of town and I was inbound. I’ spotted it on the way out and called operations that I might need to divert on the way back.

They just told me to give them a call on the way back, which I did as I approached and got the response to wait until I heard from them, we did that, but after about twenty minutes the passengers were getting restless so I called up with an idea.

‘Forgiveness is sometimes easier than permission’

Did those words magically appear on my screen? surely I can’t have written them can I?

But that’s basically what I went for, I started driving the route I knew would be open, knowing it would take an extra half an hour, but at least we’d get there, when we finally got permission to use the route (we had to get it from the regional authorities, as we would have been fined for leaving the route otherwise) I was already in town (but I wasn’t telling them that :-))

The passengers loved it, and they even got to see a part of the city they’d never known existed

But here’s the thing, that day we all learned something, I learned that when I go that little bit further to help my passengers, they really appreciate it, and they learned to trust when I do go that little bit further.

My boss also learned something, and that’s “Lawrence gets the job done, not always in the way we agreed, but he gets it done” 

As a result, when the time came for changes, as they do, and my shift was being changed dramatically, they had ‘just the job’ for me, but maybe I’ll tell you about that some other time.

See ya there.