Grumpy Hamilton. Did everyone in Hamilton wake up on the wrong side of the bed today
 

I took a friend today to Hamilton for the day, as he had never been there.

While we had a great time, and did some hiking out near Albion Falls, and had dinner on Locke Street, etc.
One thing that stuck out on this visit, which has never happened to me before in Hamilton, was rude people.

The following happened to us.


1: Asked a bus driver to announce Concession Road, as we did not know for sure what stop it was. He was like "I will see if I remember" and did not bother making the announcment. Lucky we figured it out.

2: Asked a bus driver downtown if that particular bus went into Westdale. And she was like "I am behind schedule and have no time to answer questions, just get on the bus".

3: Waiter in a restaurant on Locke Street was nice until we payed. She went to make change for us, and came back and in a rude manner said we only put 44.37 when the bill was 34.47. It was an honest mistake, as we thought we had put both dimes there. But the way she said it was really rude.

So yeah, I have never had that experience in Hamilton before. My friend is going to give you guys another chance. :)

But I really feel like calling the HSR. Two bus drivers being so rude, is just not good. One driver was nice, and did let us off even before the stop, so we would not have to walk in the cold.
But those other two drivers were just asses.

Greedy bitch.

I don't know if HSR is different, but calling the transit company because drivers are being rude does nothing to solve the problem. At this time of year, buses are running at capacity and it is very stressful for the drivers, so you just have to accept the behaviour. They're human, they feel stress and have a breaking point.

Don't judge an entire city because three people in the service industry were rude to you during the boxing day-new years rush. I explicitly avoid public transit and restaurants/shopping centres at this time of year for the very reason you're complaining.

What vid said. Honestly, Christmas time is about the worst time to expect anybody on the street in any city to go out of their way to be polite. It's the time of the year where people are just "rush, rush, rush" and winter doesn't make it any better.

Your next visit will be much better, I'm sure.

Funny, it seems the only logical thing to echo what vid and miketoronto have said, but, as a one-year Hamilton resident, I had similar experiences with bus drivers and two rather nice restaurants on Locke street - one in which the owner was so rude that we simply left, and another in which we'd previously had much better service (and excellent food) and chalked the experience up to the waitress having a bad day. For whatever reason, restauranteurs seemed happier as we traveled eastward. Must be all those noxious factory fumes!:D

Management has a big role to play as well. Our East Side Mario's was so poorly managed that employee morale was low, the quality of food and service suffered and they went under. It just takes one person to doom a company, especially when that one person is in charge.

This does not compute. Assuming that the bill was indeed $34.47 (and that you did not make a typo), did you pay $44.37 (more than the bill by $9.90) or did you mean to say that you paid $34.37 (less than the bill by a dime)?

Hi
The bill was 34.47, and we left 44.37.

Anyway I know not to judge a city on one experience. And I have been to Hamilton many times.

But no matter what time of year, public transit drivers are suppose to be nice to riders. And on top of that, they are suppose to call out stops anyway.
Both buses we were on were basically empty. So they were not dealing with crush loads at all.

When I complain to TTC about drivers, the situation seems to get fixed.
And from working at a public transit system, I know transit systems do take complaints about drivers in a serious manner.

I'm assuming you were trying to get a clean $10 back as change (although you were a dime short). Could she have been bitchy because your attempt to get clean change back made her feel you weren't going to leave a tip?

I still don't understand the problem with $44.37. 30% tip? Anyways I'm sorry you had bad time in Hamilton. The HSR experience I know everyone can relate to.

Maybe the clean $10 back would've been hers if she wasn't a bitch

I'd imagine a quarter of even more of the drivers are off on holidays. The rest are probably making overtime and running on limited holiday schedules.

The drivers aren't obligated to call out stops. Management can tell the drivers to do so but the union will protect the drivers. So right now it's completely up to the drivers discretion. Within the new year HSR is suppose to roll out the next stop voice system. Currently HSR is testing the system out.

We did not have a bad time. We still had a great time. I love Hamilton.

But HSR will be hearing about this.

I work in the public transit industry, and if we pulled that where I work, it would not go over well at all.

Unless it's a holiday, the HSR is running a regular schedule, and a lot of the regular drivers should be out there. However, this is the week where the schedules change, so you'll get a whole bunch of drivers on routes new to them. It can be a bit stressful, and probably an unfortunate time to make the switch, as there seem to be a lot of extra riders around now equally unsure where they're going.

As for not calling out Concession (Street), hopefully you were on a route that only crosses it, rather than travels along it. I've seen people get on a bus like King and ask the driver if they went to Queenston Road. The driver tells them that they travel on Queenston, and the passenger can't narrow it down more than that. Plus the schedule change thing can be really distracting, and there's no way they'll always remember your stop. If it's that big a worry, stay near the front where the driver can see you. If you can't spot it yourself, then your presence may help remind the driver.