Sometimes the only way to get through to people is to do exactly what they ask you to do.
That’s the situation in today’s story, where an employee insists on being dropped off at her door on the work provided service bus. She has no idea what she is really requesting.
Let’s see how the story unfolds…
So to set the stage, i live in istanbul, and us turks are known for our bad city planning, but istanbul is extra infamous for it.
It’s regular for us natives of the city to endure complaints about how bad the traffic is, how awfully structured the roads are and how long it takes to get to literally anywhere yadda yadda from out friends who came from other parts of anatolia to work or study here.
I just want to get the point across for foreigners about how bad istanbul traffic and road structure is.
If you have a car, it is legit normal to have a 2 hour commute home at the very least, during rush hour.
It takes a long time to get to and from work via the provided bus.
Anyways so at my work they provide a service bus because our building is in the outskirts of istanbul where they haven’t connected a lot of public transportation means yet (this is also a common occurence for us corporate slave folks of istanbul, big companies like these are usually located away from the central parts of the city) and people who live close by take the same service bus.
And the bus is pretty crowded, about 20 people who all live in close by towns to each other.
Like i said, i want you to understand how bad the city planning is.
To get to these central parts of the city from our building in the outskirts would take no longer than 30 minutes, but traveling between the towns and dropping everyone off is the rest of the 1:30 hours.
Now it sounds like the commute will take even longer.
So a karen joined our bus the other day, and she lived in taksim apparently, which is a very famous town and is literally connected to every bus, minibus, subway etc imaginable.
Even you foreigners might have heard of it.
She is the only one out of 20 people who lives there.
The bus driver tried to prevent the longer than necessary commute time.
So the bus driver asks her if he can drop her off at a public transporation station that connects to taksim which would literally be any station in the entire city.
But she refuses, and also complaines about the bus driver all the way to the higher ups of the company.
And the bus driver gets scolded and disciplined, and was told to drop her off at the exact location she wanted to be dropped off at.
Cue malicious compliance.
This is a MUCH longer commute.
Next day the bus driver replans the route keeping taksim in mind.
She is right about in the middle of the drop off order. and, i kid you not, it legit takes just an extra 2 hours in traffic just to reach to taksim.
This is without including dropping off other people or reaching the city center mind you.
And of course once you set the route as it is, since it’s impossible to get out of traffic, she can’t tell the bus driver she changed her mind and to go somewhere else.
Karen had no choice but to endure the long commute home.
She can’t get off the bus too. She has to wait with everyone else, or she might get lynched at work the next day if she hops off at this point.
Tired workers are even more tired now, and also pissed because they didn’t want to suffer in the hell that is istanbul traffic anymore than they already had to.
Bus driver insists on dropping her right in front of her doorstep.
It seems that she changed her mind about being dropped off at her door.
She finally gets off the bus and everyone is giving her a stink eye, because while she did get off, the rest are gonna have to wait in more traffic to get out of taksim now.
All in all she wasted at least 3 hours out of everyones time including hers, probably more out of people who were going to be dropped off after her.
She now asks to be dropped off at a minibus station at somebody elses drop off stop.
Never complained about it ever again too.
If I were the bus driver, I would’ve planned the route to drop her off last so she didn’t make everyone else wait longer.
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…
This reader can relate to horrible Istanbul traffic.
Here’s another experience with Istanbul traffic.
Another reader had a stressful experience in Istanbul traffic.
This reader definitely prefers the subway in Istanbul.
I think it was more about how long the commute took than the coworkers’ reactions.
I’m making a mental note to take the subway if I’m ever in Istanbul.
Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.
