On Noble Jobs

In my career I have mostly come across people who are in their jobs because they love the challenge and hype of the corporate world and of solving complex problems for big organisations, or because they love the money that comes with it. Therefore I have always been impressed by people on the other side who choose to take up jobs which are sometimes dangerous, do not necessarily generate them a lot financial return but which I find so noble.

Ticking off the list, there are the policemen, the firemen, the teachers, the garbage collectors, the prosecutors and the doctors (only partially because most of the time they do get paid heaps), and let us not forget, the bus drivers.

Now, bus drivers are people whom I come across most mornings when I go to work. Although most of the time the bus trips are fairly uneventful, I observe that the bus driver is perhaps one of the few occupations that come with stress at multiple levels even during an uneventful trip and worse still, during an eventful one e.g.

- time pressure - buses usually have to be at a certain location at a specific time
- time pressure, in addition to driving a big complex machine with about 20 different buttons
- bad driving from other vehicles - I have been involved in a "bus accident" on 2 occasions and witnessed 1
- providing sufficient and safe space on the bus to your passengers - telling anxious, perhaps work-late people that they can no longer board the bus because it's full
- dealing with kids and other fully-abled passengers who do not voluntarily give space to people in need
- and the most unfortunate of them all, dealing with passengers who are abusive towards other passengers or the bus driver themselves - type in "bus driver attack" on google and be surprised by how many incidents that are returned

I understand that in some of these instances they might not have a choice (these would be the drivers who merely grudgingly nod at you when you say "good morning" to them), but I have also seen bus drivers who are in their jobs purely because they love it and they love getting people to their destinations on time (these are the drivers who play chirpy jazzy music in the mornings and greet you with smiley "good mornings"). In fact, if you remember the sad news of Mr Sin who lost his eye last year from a bus attack, Mr Sin had been a driver for 18 years and liked his job. Needless to say, he would not be returning to bus driving after the incident.

Like any other jobs, but particularly so for these noble jobs, I find it sad that people are discouraged from doing what they love doing due to the ignorant, callous and sometimes violent acts of others. I think that we have to remember that a lot of these noble people are performing their jobs for the betterment of the society, jobs which most of us would not risk our dear lives to do - so instead of criticising them we should show them the amount of respect they deserve. On a selfish note, I would not want to wake up one morning and find that there are no longer bus drivers around - city parking is very expensive (this will be yet another topic for another day).