Something was telling me not to get on that bus. It left me sufficiently ill at ease that I did not get on.

A guy on the bus was driving with no license. They gave him one & then suspended it. His grandma beat up the judge @ school.

Busted ass at work today. Wound up herding a lot of cats -- that is to say, there's this survey that the county sends out to businesses to have their employees fill out. (Maricopa county. Trip Reduction Survey.) We do it yearly. Friday and Saturday, I had first one here-to-assist supervisor get the people and herd them through it, then another. Today, we were two men down, and it fell to me.

It really wasn't all that bad. I made a quick sort of the people, and started out by attacking Area 1 and summoning them to the area set up for the surveys. I never knew how hard it was to pry a specific person off the phones before. Now I do. A lot of people complained. A lot of people did the "But I've already done that survey before!" I had them shut up and color. I troubleshot survey errors. (Putting a letter in a numeric-only box is a problem. Old lady: dead.) I did this for morning. I did this for evening. It was a lot of surveys.

One Old Lady who works on the weekends is quite honestly scary. She has nearly pure white hair and froggy eyes that are enormous behind gigantically magnifying spectacles. She is always dressed impeccably. The major problem with her is that she's old enough to have earned the right to be cranky, and not ashamed to use that right, even in situations where it ought to be a privilege, and a privilege that should have long since been revoked from her. She is Always Right, and easily confused, especially on technological things. She has a fearsome temper and a scorching vocabulary. Stressy College Chick fears her.

She hadn't yet done the survey.

The survey is on a web form.

(I wound up having her over there in a moment by herself, just her and me, and when she visibly feared the scary interface, I wound up taking charge by just running the mouse while she dictated her answers. Perfect solution, and no one was harmed. I gained rapport with her by becoming her Champion in the Face of Unknown Technology, which is a position I'm reasonably happy in. Better that than Someone Who Adds To Her Stress and therefore Gets Sniped At.)

I am generally effective at this stuff, it seems. I am gaining People Skills.

So my mission now is clear: go pay ransom @ the cholla branch. I await the whim of that flighty temptress, the bus.