Waiting. (The Grey Line Journals)

It's another steamer today. A not-unbearably-hot-but-the-humidity-makes-it-all-the-worse one. Here in TS, it helps the smell of streetmeats, cigarettes, car fumes, and the unimaginable amounts of trash that this one district produces cling to your uncreative, over-worn and generally unpleasant work clothes. (White Polo shirt and dark cargo shorts. I have about three sets.) And I was late for my tour.

So, instead of taking the extended Waldorf Downtown Tour, called so because the point of it is to pick up the early risers at the Waldorf Astoria before the full DT loop. It's late in the summer, they're looking for people to screw up to thin the ranks for the fall, and I can't afford to not get a full-time fall schedule. (Called a "bid") So, I'm out to the one block that we refer to as Times Square, at least when it comes to reporting to a bus. It's Broadway between 48th & 49th, in front of a Starbucks and a designer sunglasses and perfume store. They're all air conditioned.

But as you can imagine, with handfuls of Guides, Drivers, and Dispatchers all hanging around the same block, day in and out, the idea that we could just "wait inside till our bus comes" is utterly preposterous to the owners and operators of said shops. Well, we get away with Starbucks pretty often, but that's because we tend to patronize it with business much moreso than the other two. Blocking the door is also a big no-no, but on steamers like today, many try to gather close enough to soak in as much cool as we can when someone walks in or out.

There's an average of five of us here at a time, and I've been waiting an hour. See, those on a bid, (and there on time) get priority, and if they're lucky, get on their bus within 20 minutes of when they're supposed to. Extras and lates can stand there for over an hour. I'm talking with an old-timer, not to say that's he's particularly old, but he's been here a few years, so got seniority when it came to choosing bids. Youthful energy, very animated. Probably a great guide. (That's the most description I'll give here. I'd like to keep most of my characters anonimous) Like most smart Grey Line vets, he chose an Extra bid. As long as he shows up, he gets paid. Which means on busy days, he could do 3, 4, sometimes even a murderous 5 runs. Slow days, he could just sit in the back of the theater all day long.

"I gotta tell you, I love this job." He says, as we've both been waiting nearly an hour as Bid Guide after Bid Guide go on buses, filling up 3/4 full with late-summer tourists maybe one every fifteen minutes. "I sit around twelve hours and do one two hour service order, and by the end of the week, I'm collecting overtime. And oh my God, this two hour service order was a group of European and South American Au Pairs!" Here we go. Tour Guide Bragadoccio.

"I chat them up, and then this one girl from Brazil, but said it like: 'Brathil' as if what she was really saying was. 'I want to. . ." I'll leave the rest to imagination. Told me they were all staying at the 63rd st. Y. I glanced at my watch and wondered how much more time I would be standing or sitting around waiting to get on a bus.

The conversation shifted to Grey Line Gossip, and the latest outrage by the company. The big buzz recently was that a Guide had just been fired for moving a bus. A young guide, friend of mine actually, 25, Latin American, charming, smart. Well, if he was so smart, what the hell was he doing getting behind the wheel of a bus? The Guides' gut reaction to the news was outrage at the company. "Should've just suspended him!" or "It was only ten feet!" Mack stared at us, sweat beads accumulated on his large round forehead doing all he could to keep his lips tight.

Mack is the head dispatcher at TS. Hefty Guy, bald and black, with a goatee, glasses and a postive disposition. He's friendly and professional, even on steamers like today when he doesn't have the fortune to go back to the AC'd bullpen & theater. Even the top of the bus is better than here. The air is moving, you get some respits from Urbanity when passing by Grenwich Village or Central Park, not to mention a seat. Mack is standing on that curb every day, radio and clipboard, managing the chaos day in and out, hours at a time.

All the Guides eventually shut up and listened to what Mack had to say on the issue:

"If I was here when ----------- was driving that bus, I would have removed him myself and handed him to the cops! He did not have a CDL (commercial drivers license) he had tourists on the bus, and it doesn't matter if it was ten feet, or a joyride down to Florida, if he had hit someone? That'd be it. Done." The guides sat back, swallowing their brash opinions, not realizing that it had happened in TS, surrounded by tourists, dispatchers, guides, and quite possibly the company owners & managers who like to check up on us this time of year.

"Well, I think he was showing initiative. What if that bus needed to be moved?" the Bilingual Bragadoccio asked before Mack stared him down into the pavement.

"How long you been working Grey Line?" He asked

"Since. . . '98."

"And have you ever, in that entire time NEEDed to move a bus?" Point and match.

The Guides scattered a bit, adjusting their bags and glancing around the all-too-familiar scene, The garish neon to our Right, (facing the buses, of course,) the Crowne Plaza to our left, and across the street from the enormous brown hotel, the construction site for a rising set of steel and concrete floors and a billboard in front advertising "Luxury Condominiums, coming soon!"

And with nothing much to say, we fall back on one of the quite overused conversation starters of the area.

"Can you believe this thing? Who the hell would want to live right here?"