(24 Jul 2020, 10:07 am)Driver9*** wrote Fair enough, but I disagree with your comment in bold. Turning a blind eye to an 18 year old asking for a child fare is one thing but letting gangs of teenagers or drunks act like idiots and not getting involved as  it's the easy thing to do is quite another. Obviously if you're mainly driving coaches for a private operator you won't get much bother like that I'd imagine. Yes I may be on a quid or so more an hour than you but it hardly makes up for some of the crap and abuse we face nearly every day.

And before you say "Why don't you leave then?", I'd love to but the jobs market is on its arse for obvious reasons at the moment so not much scope of a new employer for the forseeable future......

(24 Jul 2020, 5:06 pm)scanialover wrote Well said Driver 9*** . The difference between service work and riding around on school contracts. Fancy, for example, booking on for duty knowing you are going to be on 17's all shift ! Fighting up and down Linthorpe Road, in and out of Yarn, listening to whinging, ungrateful townies all day. Two places I'd end up ? M'bro cop shop or Roseberry Park !! All that s**t for £10 an hour !!

Maybe I've been lucky over my 6 years with both major operators on Teesside but I can't recall having any major hassle from passengers. I did my fair share of late shifts too, especially once I was on Sapphire at Arriva. Perhaps Arriva Redcar got more than we did at Stockton with them serving the likes of Eston & Grangetown, but we served similar places at Stagecoach with Dark End, Hardwick & Low Grange for example and I never had any problems of note even late at night. I only had the Police on once and they dragged a guy off a 36 in Stockton, but I'd literally just taken over it 
Driving coaches for the last year has been interesting but to be fair I spend most of my time driving the same contracts I did at Stagecarriage which includes trying to keep on top of 70 unruly Eston kids from LJ in Guisborough lol.
To be honest I much prefer service work (hence I shy away from day trips and tours!) and I've been pushing for Coatham to start some services which we had plans for before Covid kicked off and quashed it. Hopefully we'll get chance in the near future! Moving Fromm Stagecoach to Arriva gave me far nicer routes to drive, including the 17s (and X6 to Yarm when that existed!) which I thoroughly enjoyed. Driving them was easy compared to the likes of what is now the 8/9 sat in traffic up and down Ormesby Road all day. Impossible to keep to time some days on those, much like Stagecoach's 12! That's one reason I jumped at the Sapphire rota when that became a thing, out of the way for most of your day