#by bullheadednonsense

[petty-revenge-stories]

Kick me off the bus for an arbitrary reason? Fine. Passive-aggressive public shaming days later? Less fine.

A friend reminded me of this story from college days, and it might be funny to someone else, too.

When I was in early college, I liked being barefoot while doing daily activities. I get that this is weird, many people find it kinda gross, etc. I lived in a small, very clean town, it was rare but I wasn't the only one, lotta young people exploring and expressing their crunchy granola, yadda yadda. One day I was running late to something, got on the campus bus to save time, and the bus driver positively flipped out.

Which, whatever your feelings on being a person barefoot in a place that's not a house, I understand them. I was making a choice to be a weirdo, and not everybody's going to be cool with that.

(Side note, I don't know about every state in the US, but in the state I was in there's no laws one way or the other, just an OSHA guideline that says employers are allowed to mandate employee shoes, but not to harass customers about their footwear. But, I wasn't gonna argue too much, that's a really lame hill to die on, and I'm not about to make somebody's day harder because I didn't feel like wearing shoes.)

So the bus driver loudly decided that nope, no barefoot hooligan was riding HIS BUS, he'd never SEEN SUCH A THING, the UNIVERSITY HAS RULES YOU KNOW, etc. I said that I'd looked up the university rules on the subject and I'd respect his rules on his bus, and leave if he personally wanted me to, but that the university itself had no official opinion on the matter. Well, he couldn't believe such disrespect. So I apologized, got off, walked, was late, did the necessary things to make up for being late, and thought no more of it.

...Until like a week and a half later, when I happened to go by the bus stop again, and there was a sign. Not an official university announcement or notice, no, just a single piece of regular white printer paper, block font, landscape for some reason, large text awkwardly centered with a weird amount of white space, scotch taped to the bus shelter, that read:

SHOES MUST BE WORN ON BUS FOR SAFETY REASONS

Which was hilarious, and a strange mix of high and low effort.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the next stop along that route. Another one. Weird. Looked at a couple more. Sure enough, all of them had these pieces of paper. I asked room mates and friends. They had been seeing them, too, though they didn't know why specifically, all over campus.

This bus driver had been so horrified by my feet that he actually went and printed out signs, taped them up all over campus, and had apparently even been replacing them when they blew away. Ok, now this is weird and vindictive, in addition to being hilarious and a strange mix of high and low effort.

So I made my own signs in retribution. The library printers were conveniently located, and along with the meal plan and stuff we got some printing credits I rarely had to use. Had a lot of fun brainstorming silly ideas with friends. Exactly copied his format. Landscape style for some reason, no letterhead, huge, block font in the center of the page, with a weird amount of white space, scotch taped to the bus shelters.

Stuff like:

HARD HATS REQUIRED ON THE BUS FOR SAFETY REASONS

WATER WINGS MUST BE WORN AT ALL TIMES

DO NOT OBEY NOTICES THAT ARE NOT ON OFFICIAL UNIVERSITY LETTERHEAD, FOR SAFETY REASONS

PASSENGERS MUST CARRY FLASHLIGHTS IN CASE OF EQUIPMENT FAILURE

GOATS ARE STRICTLY PROHIBITED ON THE BUS

SAFETY BELTS REQUIRED ON THE BUS FOR SAFETY REASONS

OBEY ALL NOTICES

...And so on.

So everyone I knew who thought this was amusing just started posting them next to his signs, and replacing them whenever one was taken down. Nobody took any of the original signs down or anything like that, we just kept posting the funny ones next to his. Occasionally we'd overhear a stranger laughing about it and wondering what the heck was up, and that was kinda fun.

After a while of this, I want to say at least a month or two although I could be exaggerating in my memory, the university finally took all of the signs down, both mine and his, and replaced them with notices on official letterhead that just said "No posting notices on bus stops" with some citation threat on it. By then it was getting cold so everyone was wearing shoes anyway.

I never rode the bus again anyway, through sheer coincidence.

And that's my small, but definitely petty, revenge story.

(source) (story by bullheadednonsense)