Rust Bucket

05/23/2024

By Andrea Menzies

Many people do not realize most school buses are rust buckets that are falling apart. This month they tried to switch me from teaching to bus driving, and when I could not pass the bus driving tests on rust bucket buses they fired me from both bus driving and teaching. Applying for bus work if you are already employed in Virginia means you will be fired from teaching. They did not inform me of this until after I applied for bus work, and would not let me work teaching hours I tried to work.

Bus replacement and repair is expensive so dangerous buses are kept in service. Bus drivers are blamed for bus wrecks when bus maintenance is to blame. Working conditions and not pay are to blame for the shortage. Bus drivers used to have a written test one page long, and now it is 4 tests of thousands of pages on hot and snow-weather driving. It is almost impossible to pass even if you are great at doing job tasks. I could not do many job tasks in April and May of this year that involved going into a room full of men with military shirts and tattoos for bus training. I was assaulted at Fort Lee military base in 2005, and had to go to rape therapy for PTSD, night terrors, insomnia, and nightmares for years afterwards until 2017. If you don’t like a guy at a coffee shop or dance club you can just leave. At a military job you are stuck day and night with them for months. Since then many employers have tried to make me work alone, unchaperoned, with men with military logos on their clothes, desk, arm tattoos, and walls. I hate them for doing this with all my soul. I got punished this month for not doing tests well under these conditions.

I find it interesting in a morbid way how many men and women that were never attacked tell me how I “should” feel about it and “get over” it. PTSD means you cannot do that at all. Medication and therapy has horrible side effects, and helps almost nothing at all. Donald Trump was a 13 times accused rapist that massively cut funding to rape programs across America in his presidency so I cannot go back to therapy without huge personal expense. My insurance does not cover it. I now cannot pay for treatment at all. If you were wondering how lack of therapy can reduce employment remember I was an honors student in High School, and a University graduate before rape greatly hurt my earning power. Lily Duran dragged me to a military dominated area called Virginia at a horrible time.