I thank bus drivers, and it’s not (just) because I’m Canadian

I haven’t been on a bus nearly as much since I retired a few months. But for years, I took the bus to work most weekdays, and had things down so pat that I knew the codes for the various stops on my route (No. 2, as the photo above, snapped in 2019, will indicate) so I could text for bus proximity updates.

If I had left home a bit early, I’d try to get in an extra walk beyond the stop where I usually got on board, though I never wanted to chance missing the bus.

Years ago, a friend who had moved to St. John’s wondered why people in St. John’s thanked the bus driver. Is that a St. John’s thing? he asked.

I had to think about it. I had thought people in other places did it, too, but I wasn’t certain.

In any event, I explained that I usually called out “thank you” to the driver as I was exiting, and I certainly wasn’t alone. It just seemed then — as it does now — to be a decent thing to do, a brief moment of civility and goodwill in a world that could use a lot more of it.

And it’s certainly not a St. John’s thing, exclusively, anyway. This Quora post is titled Why do people in Canada thank the bus driver when they get off? It seems like everyone thinks it’s a habit that people in a particular area do.

I roared when I saw this video from the Irish comedy series Darren and Joe’s Free Gaff, which also proves that thanking the driver is the done thing all over.

OR ELSE.

A final note. One of the Metrobus drivers thanks every passenger — every one, all the time — as they are leaving. How could you not feel better about the world, just for a moment?