Tuesday, October 18, 2005

And the bus drama continues

Apparently the bus garage realized that kindergarteners shouldn't have to sit on a bus for over 45 minutes, and added a new bus with only 10 kids that goes pretty much straight to our street. (They, of course, didn't tell us this, even though Dan had spoken with the woman in charge at length about why we were switching stops, etc.- we heard it from a neighbor on Monday, and the new route had begun on Friday.) I decided there was no way I was going to trek a few sidewalkless blocks to C's current bus stop when they started a new route essentially just for him, and when Neighbor Friend was on the new bus. He was freaked out; didn't want to switch; etc. We agreed that Dan would go to the school to get him on the bus the first day he rode it, and C was still not feeling good about it, but he had to suck it up.

And Dan calls the bus garage Monday to switch him, and is told only one person is allowed to switch bus routes, and she had a day off. (Tallying the number of things wrong with the bus garage evident in that sentence alone will be left as an exercise for the reader.) Really, it would have been no big deal, except we'd already gone through the angst with C, and we ended up having to do it again today, along with additional phone- and fax- tag with the bus garage.

Everything went fine today, and C's bus beat Dan home; we're really happy about the new route. Soon we'll have another "discussion" with the bus garage about dropping Cadao off at our house. They drop all the kindergarteners off right at their doors, except for him, because the circle we live on is tight for a big school bus. We have to walk to Neighbor Friend's house. BUT now he comes home on a mini school bus, which can easily manage the road. I'm sure they'll claim that equipment can change, etc. and refuse. Grrr.

I'm especially annoyed at the bus garage because I feel like Dan has spent vast amounts of time lately on the phone with various entities just trying to get them to do their jobs. When we came back from Twin Trees on Columbus Day, our mudroom roof was leaking. It had been repaired last January and the roofers guaranteed their work for a year. Dan called the roofer multiple times, the roofer claimed he'd come multiple times, never did (and never even called when he didn't bother showing up), and most recently claimed he sent people over who did the work on it while we were out on Saturday. (There's no evidence of work having been done, but it finally stopped raining, and thus leaking.) The roofer is still ignoring us. Dan also recently spent hours on the phone with our insurance company, which pulled a bait-and-switch routine on us; and we won't even talk about the various health insurance and government offices that are lying to or ignoring us.

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