Heroes work here? A few weeks ago a sign declaring that appeared outside Center Garage. It felt fake, like we might as well get one too now that every other hospital, nursing home, and grocery store has had them for a couple of months now. Of course, the cynic in me has always viewed motivational posters suspiciously — if you’ve gotta put up a sign to make us happier, maybe we should reconsider what could be done to make that motivation more intrinsic.
Still, it got me thinking. Am I a hero? Do I work with heroes? What is a hero? TriMet, management, folks on the street, they can call me what they want but a hero never claims they are a hero, only a blustering fool would claim they are doing a tremendous or great job rather than letting their actions speak for themselves.
I don’t feel like I’m hero driving the bus, and I don’t feel like we are set up for success by the same management that celebrates our heroics with a poster and a tote bag with a granola bar. Every day, bus drivers are putting their lives on the line driving people and the numbers are scary. In New York City more than 100 transit workers have died from Coronavirus, and everyday a union Facebook group I belong to has another name of another person that is now dead because of this virus, who probably got it just doing their job. The disconnect is real between us on the front lines and management behind the scenes. It shows when we see our general manager collecting his six-figure-salary while working from home in Lake Oswego while we deal with unmasked riders who refuse to do their part. And the disconnect is real when Doug Kelsey sent out an all staff email July 1 lamenting that office staff will be working from home until at least September 8 because of the danger of coronavirus, while we drivers face the city behind our wheels, armed with only a bag of sanitizing wipes, a face mask, and a shield door if we’re lucky. I know this is the job I signed up for, to drive a bus, but I would have never thought I would drive a bus through a world like this. The pats on the back feel hollow when leaders send us to our potential deaths from the safety of their homes.
So if I am not hero, why am I complaining about a poster and a free granola bar? Just take it and be quiet. Be thankful you have a job, while half of working age adults in this country are trying to figure out how to get by without one. It’s because so many of the people who are essential, who have been putting their lives on the line every day, the nurses, the doctors, the EMTs, firefighters, janitors, grocery store clerks, truck drivers, and bus drivers deserve so much more than just a pat on the back from this country. Hazard pay would be a nice start. Everyone wearing a mask with no arguments would be even cheaper and easier. A competent government taking and following the advice of scientists might be too much to ask, but is it too hard to ask leaders to do their duty and to do what is right regardless of how hard it is?
Last week I was stopped in the grocery store. I was in uniform, trying to make a quick trip on the way home. A woman stopped to thank me for everything I’m doing. Keep on driving, she said, you’re a hero. This is isn’t that odd, most good riders thank their driver on the way out the door in Portland, but it still made me feel awkward. Just doing my job, I thought, getting paid for it too. This isn’t the first time I’ve been put in the awkward situation of folks thanking me for things that don’t deserve. When I got out of the Marines, I got used to the ongoing, awkward “Thank you for your service,” whenever people figured out that I had been in the Marines. At first it caught me off guard, then I just started saying, “You’re welcome,” because what else do you say when people thank you? I never felt my five years in the Marine Corps deserved any thanks, much like I don’t think driving a bus qualifies me as a hero but I just do my best and hope I make it through.
During my deployments to Iraq, we knew IEDs were the biggest threat to us. We were pretty safe on our outposts, insurgents knew they would lose in a straight up firefight, so I knew if I was to die, it would be getting blown to bits from below in whatever vehicle I was traveling in. It frustrated me thinking the Marine Corps knew this, the government knew this, and yet here we were tooling around Iraq in a LAV, knowing an IED would totally turn my testicles into kibble bits and melt my skin into my flak jacket. I felt unprotected and just stared at the desert outside my hatch and hoped nothing terrible would happen. No one in the desert was coming to save me. We were one our own, doing our best with what we had. We were told we had to get the mission done, because in the Marine Corps, it’s mission accomplishment first, troop welfare second.
I’m not a hero, because I am just doing my job, an essential job, that hopefully is helping others get to their essential jobs and on essential trips. Bus driving isn’t glamorous, but it’s a good job, an important one, one many don’t think of but that helps to keep the city going and the wheels turning. I am accomplishing that mission every day. This pandemic has made lots of heroes, the health care workers taking care of our elderly in care homes, the nurses working round the clock, the grocery store workers who keep our shelves stocked, and the teachers who we asked to transition to teaching online overnight (I have no idea how they are teaching seven-year-olds how to read on Zoom calls). There are so many who deserve thanks during this pandemic, maybe even bus drivers too. You want to know why they deserve thanks, why they are heroes? They are doing what is right, they are doing their duty, they are doing what they would hope others would do if they could.
When I was a kid growing up in Bend, we attended the same church as Bob Maxwell for a few years. He won the Congressional Medal of Honor during World War II for throwing himself on top of a grenade that had been tossed in their foxhole, saving his fellow soldiers. I was in awe, here is a real life hero, a man who won the nation’s highest honor. Maxwell, however, was a humble man, quiet, and kind. I never asked him about it at all, but I remember reading somewhere that he just did what he thought was right, he didn’t think about it at all, that he just did his duty, saving his fellow soldiers.
Maxwell was a good man, a good man doing the right thing at the right time. The problem with our country right now is that good people doing the right thing are lacking. Doing what is right, fulfilling your duty, making the difficult choices and being brave in the face of adversity is lacking. We have a President more willing to play golf while the virus burns through the country and the economy. A Congress and Republican Party that won’t hold Trump accountable while he pardons his crooked friends and allows money that was supposed to help citizens and small businesses line the pockets of already rich corporations.
Perhaps we are so quick to call essential workers heroes because good people doing the right thing is such a rare thing to see these days. While our leaders, the rich, and the well off get to hide at home and ride out the crisis in comfort, we are asked to go out time and time again. Every time I go out to drive the bus I feel less like an essential worker and more just like an expendable worker.
If TriMet thinks I’m hero, so be it, but I’m just doing my job. If being a hero is just doing your job, is just doing what is right when no one else will, if it is just doing your duty, then our country needs more people just doing what is right. We need people who are doing their duty when it feels the whole world is falling apart right. Maybe that is why they are calling us heroes, because finding people who do their duty, and do what is right and honorable is a rare commodity to find. The “heroes” at TriMet are doing their duty as the world falls apart. Please do yours. Wear your mask and stay home if you can. This isn’t easy, but be a hero and do what is right and what you can do. Our lives depend on it.
This is a personal blog, the views expressed in this blog are solely mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of TriMet.
