Raleigh C.A.T. Trying to get through the red tape. Raleigh North Carolina

An employee of mine was late getting to work a few days ago. She had called me from her cell phone to tell me that due to a driver refusing to drive a bus, that she would be late. When she finally made it to work, she offered to explain.

It seems that the female driver of the first bus that she must take in order to catch her connector bus just to make it to work, had stopped and refused to go any further. As it would be, her shift was over. The girl explained to me that the driver got half way to the connector point and pulled the bus over and stopped. The driver then exited the bus and sat down on the curb.

At first, no one cared since the bus was ahead of schedule about 5 minutes, but when 15 minutes had gone by, people began exiting the bus asking the woman why they were still stopped. All the woman would tell them is, "My shift is over, the other driver is on his way." According to my employee, that sat there for a total of 35 minutes before the other driver arrived, causing her to miss the connector and be late.

I asked her to file a report and being the person that she is, said to just let it go. But I can't. So I checked out the Raleigh C.A.T. page to file a complaint. I was very shocked to find that not only can I not file a complaint, but in order to even make myself known, I will have to download a form, fill it out, send it back in to the transit office(no later than Thursday) a full two weeks before the Transit Authority's next meeting so that they may schedule me to be heard and then, if I do not fit into the scheduled hours of the meeting, that I can be pushed back to the FOLLOWING meeting.

I'm sorry, I work for a living. I don't have time to drive 45 minutes into downtown and pay for parking in an overpriced parking deck just to sit in a room for two hours and tell some Union-based committee that really doesn't care what I have to say that they made my employee late to work because someone that THEY PAY didn't want to work.

It's not so much of a rip off, as it just pisses me off. The Raleigh Transit is so horrible, they actually inspired a male employee of mine to go to the DMV and take the necessary classes in order to gain his license back after losing it four years ago. I just wish there was a better way to make my voice heard that didn't involve me having to yell at committee for two hours.

Mrs. Z
raleigh, North Carolina
U.S.A.