Metrobus drivers get customer service training

Silas Smith sat ramrod straight in the front of the classroom. He adjusted his black-framed glasses and leaned forward, taking notes as he listened to the lesson.

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Leave your personal life at home.

Don’t take it personally.

It’s the kind of advice that could apply to almost any office worker in the D.C. region’s go-go-go work environment. But Smith’s office is a 15-ton Metrobus, and he and his fellow drivers know their decisions — and distractions — can have life-altering consequences as they maneuver the 40-foot-long vehicles through the region’s notorious traffic congestion.

Each day, Metro pulls about a dozen of its bus operators off their routes for an eight-hour course on dealing with the particular stresses of the bus workplace. They role-play how to deal with unruly schoolkids or a passenger smoking a cigarette. They get refreshers on how to help disabled passengers and how to report an emergency.

And they vent.

Smith, who has been driving for 14 years, was one of the students in a recent class, and he said he’s never had such an intense customer service training session.

“It’s very helpful,” he said. “We’re out there dealing with people, and without some structure and guidance, it is a guessing game.”

Bus service can be more readily expanded, but to win over riders, Metro’s bus division must win a public relations battle.

One of the most frequent complaints from riders is rude and uncooperative drivers. In the past four years, the transit agency said it has received more than 7,500 complaints in that category alone from the nearly half a million riders a day who board its buses.

A look at the challenges of the job helps explain what’s happening.

Besides the difficulty of driving a massive vehicle for hours, there’s bumper-to-bumper traffic, argumentative passengers and rowdy teenagers.

Since October, Metro has trained more than 600 of its roughly 2,500 bus operators and plans to put the rest through the class by 2014.

The class also comes as Metro’s bus operators have seen a rash of attacks in recent months. Buses are struck by rocks and bricks. Bus operators have been beaten up and spit on by customers. And in one case, a Metrobus operator said he was grazed in the leg after a man shot and killed his girlfriend and wounded their small child as she tried to get aboard a bus in Southeast.

Assaulting a bus operator is a misdemeanor in Maryland, Virginia and the District, according to Metro Transit Police officials. The District has beefed up the penalties for assaulting a transit operator, and Maryland’s legislature is trying to do something similar.

Michael Taborn, Metro’s Transit Police chief, recently called bus operators’ jobs “the toughest” in the transit system in testimony before the board on the spate of violence.

Metro does give drivers some customer service training when they start, but the latest training is meant to serve as a refresher and deal with the daily realities of driving.

Anne Carey, director of administration and training, said a previous customer service class, for which Metro had hired an outside consulting firm, was “horrible” because consultants “didn’t know the business.”