A rumination.

[saxikath]

Last night, a woman got on the bus ahead of me with a largish dog on a leash. The driver told her she could not bring the dog on board unless it were a service animal, to which she insisted, "He rides this bus all the time!" "My mother is handicapped, she needs this dog, she can't come get it!" Eventually she just barged on past him. The driver got off and went and talked to someone, holding up our bus and any buses waiting behind it, for several minutes, before finally coming back and driving off with her and her dog still on the bus.

Now, on the one hand, I had some sympathy for the woman; the dog seemed well-behaved enough, and I expect most drivers are pretty lenient about it.

But on the other hand, the woman's attitude smacked rather a lot of "The universe will work the way I want it to, and your mere rules do not apply to me!" The driver was trying to do his job, and she was being loud and obnoxious and holding things up for everyone.

How would you have felt about it?

Comments

[totient]

I'd have been on the side of the woman with the dog, assuming that there was room on the bus for the dog. The T's pet policy is posted in several different places, not entirely consistently, but the bottom line is that pets are allowed on the T, so long as they're not causing a problem.

[bookishfellow.livejournal.com]

Unless the woman was lying about the handicapped mother, it sounds as though the dog was a service animal, albeit off duty. So I'd say, the dog should be allowed to ride (although I admit that's probably a gray area in the regs).

On the other hand, the woman could have gotten her way quicker and with fewer ruffled feathers if she hadn't been snippy about it.

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

I would have been generally peeved. :} Useful, no?

Since pets are allowed and it wasn't too crowded, the bus driver shouldn't have objected. But she was just being obnoxious. You really do get farther in the world if you're nice. It's possible that even if she was nice, the bus driver would have gone off and looked for a higher authority to throw her off, but one never knows.

[crossfire.livejournal.com]

It depends on the rules. With RTD here in Colorado, only companion animals are allowed to ride with only leashes; all others must be in carriers (it's commonly posted on the buses). If someone had tried this on an RTD bus I was riding on, I probably would have been irritated enough to tell her to get off and hire a cab so the rest of us could go to work.

[cnoocy]

I must admit to a general low-level frustration with the inability of the MBTA to keep their rules straight. I have been requested to take actions by one driver for which another driver had scolded me like a child a month previously. And I don't even have to deal with selective treatment of TAP card holders.
What I'm saying is that in a situation like that, I assume that there's a disconnect between T policy and what individual drivers enforce, and I can't see how a woman bringing her dog to her blind mother should have to deal with that.
Of course, that's assuming that she's telling the truth.

[jadelennox]

The MBTA sez:

Can I take my pet on the T?
Yes. Small animals may be transported in a carrier. Larger animals may be taken on the T during off-peak hours and must be leashed and controlled at all times. At no time should a pet compromise safety, get in a passenger's way or occupy a seat. Service animals are allowed at all times.

So to me it depends on what time it was and how crowded the bus was. But as cnoocy points out, way too many T employees enforce their own vision of what the rules ought to be, regardless of the rules.

[thedan.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: I hate dogs.

In general, people who think rules don't apply to them drive me crazy. Assuming this is an official rule, I'm all for it being enforced, regardless of how lenient other drivers might be.

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

Well, just because someone is right, or may have the rules on their side doesn't mean they can't be bloody annoying, and doesn't mean I won't get pissed at them.

Because the driver didn't seem to know the rules, I would get pissed at him. But because the woman was rude in the way she went about defending her rights, I would get pissed at her, too!