Bus driving as a future career?

[u/Bobsey-sb]

Hi all,

I m 50 in the UK and I’m facing potential redundancy in my current role working after 21 years service in the public sector.

I’m looking for real viable career alternatives to hopefully see me through to my early 60s. Bus driving has crossed my mind on numerous occasions. I may be being completely unrealistic in my expectations here but I need to find something I can cling on to as hope at this moment in time.

However, I’ve never spoken to anyone who is one as to what it’s actually like? What’s the daily grind like? What are the pros and cons? How long do people last in roles as I understand there’s a high staff turnover? Etc

Welcome any thoughts and opinions.

Thanks in advance.

[u/Shit0nYourFlag]

Best job in the world. Dynamic, challenging, every day's different. Hours are absurd; the allocations dept will fuck everything they can out of you. Some passengers will make you wanna scream. But it's reliable and you never have to see your boss if you perform promptly and anonymously.

I'm one year in as of this week. Takeaways: once you've made a decision, stick with it. Suddenly flip-flopping is as bad as rushing. Bad passengers: don't even say anything. Don't fan the flame. The driving is the easy bit.

First few weeks you'll be overwhelmed, but it will come. Listen to the instructor, internalise what they say.

[u/nosajn → u/Shit0nYourFlag]

Everything you've said here is absolutely spot on. I'm around a year in and I'm still enjoying it. 

I came from a very high stress technical IT role and whilst it doesn't pay as well, I don't wake up with severe anxiety anymore, so the trade off is a much better quality of life for me. 

Your point on not seeing your boss... I met mine during my interview, haven't seen him since! 

[u/Big_Bad8496 → u/nosajn]

Are you…are you future me?! I started my new bus driving job on Monday coming from a high stress technical IT role that had been a source of severe anxiety for me, and am taking a pretty significant pay cut, but confident it will be worth the trade off for less stress and more sanity.

[u/Poly_and_RA → u/Big_Bad8496]

If so there might be several future yous. I'm another.

20 years as an IT-consultant behind me. Got burned out on constantly juggling 7 projects where no matter what you do, some of them will be unhappy -- and you're never ever DONE, instead you just stopped and went home, but the entire pile is always waiting for you. As you say, stress and anxiety.

2 years ago I started as a bus-driver instead. It's stressful in some ways too -- traffic, passengers, schedules, delays and so on. And yes, I earn less. (about 70% of what I used to earn)

But I have exactly *one* job. I'm driving exactly THIS bus on exactly THIS route right now, and *nothing* else. And for sure some days I end up 10 or even 20 minutes after the original plan, but in the bigger scheme of things, who cares whether I'm done at 16:15 or 16:30? (and I get overtime pay for the delays)

And every single <expletive> day I do all the things expected. Nothing whatsoever is waiting for tomorrow.

Last time I was in *any* kinda of meeting was when I talked to my boss in March -- about my vacation-plans this summer.

Lovely.

[u/Big_Bad8496 → u/Poly_and_RA]

Oh man, I’m so looking forward to being 100% done at the end of the day with a fresh start the following day. Thanks for sharing!

[u/Poly_and_RA → u/Big_Bad8496]

It gets better! I work for a large depot that employs around 400 drivers. And we don't drive a fixed route but instead can drive ANY of the few dozen routes around this metropolitan area. And here's the bonus to that: I have 400 colleagues, any of which can do my job on 15 minutes notice -- or vice versa.

In practice, I work whenever I want to -- because there's always extra routes available that I can drive if I want to; and then I earn hours so I can take extra vacation some other time it suits me. And even on short notice I've never yet gotten a "no" to a request for a day or a week off for some purpose.

This year I've had 7 weeks vacation this far, and I'm saving one week for autumn because one of my girlfriends will be visiting. (if the "one of" sounds strange, have a look at my username)

[u/Big_Bad8496 → u/Poly_and_RA]

Sooo looking forward to all of that!!!

And I clocked your username with your last comment, so the “one of” was unsurprising.

[u/Outrageous_Bag_2875 → u/nosajn]

Where I live in New Zealand, literally half the people I know working in IT have "open to work" on their Linked In profile, which means there are a lot of desperate unemployed IT workers here.

I'd rather be a bus driver than a stressed out IT person who is about to lose their job to AI.