I've easily spent more than 200 hours aboard Greyhound buses. The bulk of these trips have been spent shuttling between New York City and Boston, but I've also taken buses to Washington, Philly and Maine, and on one terrible overnight trip, I even went all the way from Boston to Indiana. The most important thing to learn is that in the overwhelming number of instances, riding a bus is nowhere near as bad as it's reputation. Unfortunately, sometimes it is. That being said, here are the five dumbest things about Greyhound Buses.
#1. The Movies
For some reason, the films they show on the bus have to be as inoffensive as possible. This means they are terrible, and usually star either Sandra Bullock, a dog, or in some cases, both. Would it kill them to put on Star Wars?
#2. The Bathroom Seat
The bus has a bathroom, if by "bathroom" you mean "swirling metal basin of fecal-stained medicine sludge." There's a seat right next to that door, which if you pay your money for a ticket, and get on last, you will likely be sitting in. They shouldn't sell that seat.
#3. The Meal Stop
When you ride the dog over mealtime hours, in many cases, they will pull off the highway for a meal stop. In most cases, it will be at a Roy Rogers or an Arby's, restaurants that I'm confident are only in business because they pay Greyhound Bus Drivers to stop at them. Also, if you thought the bathroom seat smelled bad before? Wait until 45 people have all finished an Arby's Roast Beef sandwich. You do not want the bathroom seat.
#4. The Reserved Seating Option
One way that Greyhound has combated the passenger's fear of the bathroom seat is the relatively new "Reserved Seating Option," in which for five bucks more, you can wait in a separate line to get on the bus first. You do not want to do this. Getting on the bus first means you CANNOT pick your seatmate, and that means that the guy with blood on him might sit next to you. You do not want to sit next to the guy with blood on him. It's best to be about the 20th person on the bus, so you can select the least creepy/smallest/less smelly/farthest from the bathroom seatmate as possible. It's a delicate art.
#5. The lingering fear that you may be decapitated.
As I mentioned above, you do not want to sit next to the guy with blood on him. To be fair, in most cases you are sitting next to a perfectly nice person, who if not just like you, is relatable and friendly, and you can exchange pleasantries with them as you enjoy your ride together. On the other hand, your seatmate might saw off your head with a hunting knife and then taunt police with it. This will almost certainly never happen to you, but on the other hand, it did happen. So that anxiety is there. Don't like it? Spend 5 times as much to take a train, you coward, and see if you live forever.
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