The general culture at some operators is pretty toxic by all accounts, and the anecdotes on here back what I've heard privately. Some new drivers working overtime given lefts and rights on a piece of paper for routes they've never driver. Awful behaviour.

If you are an operator and you hire a drive  you have no real way of knowing what that person is really like. Yes, if they've come from another company, "the grapevine" kicks in, but you can't judge somebody's character on heresay.

So when a complaint comes in about a driver, how is company supposed to deal with it?

What would happen if a driver was subject to complaint about shouting at kids (justified or not), the manager has a "quiet word" and then a couple of weeks later the same driver leaves a bunch of kids at a stop? The manager is for the high jump as they didn't deal with the first complaint properly.

On the flip side, what if a driver has received a complaint about early running, the manager issues disciplinary action, but the ticket machine data is actually proven to be incorrect as the stop is geocoded in the wrong place. The driver loses all faith in the process.

In some ways, i kind of understand why grad drones are used, as they have no loyalties to begin with. Just see things in black and white. But It's a very fine line and I don't envy drivers or those managers that actually try and do the right thing when faced with some of the complaints they receive.

Thankfully they are very rare, but I know of one driver a couple of years back that committed an offence that got them sacked and could have resulted in them losing a licence, and they thought they were hard done by! The sort of person that bigs themselves up and attracts a crowd. They don't help either, because some other drivers listen to that and think everything is against them, when in fact it was one pillock doing something daft and was rightly sacked.