Muni: Tale #2

On Friday, I had hit the cord to get off the bus and was patiently waiting at the door to the Masonic/Fulton stop. I grabbed the silver handles, but the doors didn't open. A 40-something woman who was right next to me and who I see on this bus quite often yelled at me to grab the handles and step down, and I finally turned to her and said "Look, the green light isn't on, and this is a handle-bar-to-exit bus, so stop yelling at me and get a clue!" One nice "Back door!" to the driver later, and I was on my merry way.

What I've come to realize is that many San Franciscans are clueless as to how to get off a bus. We have two types of Muni buses: one where you step down into the stairwell to get off and one where you have to touch the silver handle bar to release the doors. For both, the exit strategy will only work if the green light is on above the door. Seems pretty simple, but apparently it's not.

There have been countless times where I've had to tell some obvious local that they need to step down; holding the yellow handle bar does nada. The sign in front of them even says something like to exit, STEP DOWN INTO STAIRWELL. This requires you to be literate, though, and that's tough to do, especially if you've got an MBA from Stanford. or Harvard. or Columbia. or even SFSU. And you're talking on your cell phone while listening to the Black Eyed Peas on your iPod at full blast while reading both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal simultaneously. Juggling a grande latte is optional as is tying your shoes.

There's also the problem with people stepping down when they need to grab the silver handles. Again, there's adequate signage at eye level, plus huge-ass SILVER hydraulic-type handle bars in front of you. Yet you hear some young hip woman yelling "Back door!" when the green light is on and all she needs to do is grab the bars. Learn to read. Please. Or, better yet, be observant! Don't assume that the doors will just magically open for you. They won't. This is California, not some happy-go-lucky place like Sweden.

Lastly, there's that wonderful green light. If the light isn't on, the doors won't open for you anyway. There's no reason to jump up and down and pound on the handles and cry like it's the end of the world, no matter what color those handles are. It won't help. And if you're doing this at a random corner and not even at a regular bus stop, you're just exerting energy that would be best used constructively, like discovering a cure for cancer or figuring out why we have two different methods of getting off our city's buses.