Disagreement at Work (2 year old story)

Okay, so this story happened 2 years ago and concerns me being suspicious of an acting (new) inspector allocating me a faulty bus.

I hadn't liked the way this guy spoke to me the previous morning to the incident being discussed in this post. I was a bit late that morning and had got a phone call when entering the car park. When I answered there was no one to speak on the other end. A few minutes after that when I arrived in he said "David boy, when I call you fucking answer" and others would have heard this. He could see that I was taken aback so he then pretended he was joking. I said "sorry, I as a bit late there" but he then pretended it wasn't even a thing, and that he was only ringing because he didn't know if he'd given me a bus or not. It's an Irish thing to give mixed messages like that. He then gave me a bus with no camera monitors working (reversing, upstairs, middle door). This is common enough with their buses so I wasn't suspicious about that. I refused it and grabbed another bus, and walking back in to tell them which one, and why I refused the first one... I wasn't really asking. He sarcastically shouted "right so David". I got a call from them 3 mins later but I couldn't answer as I was driving the bus.

The next morning I had my mind made up that I was going to go in and give out to this guy about the way he spoke to me, and how I was entitled to refuse a bus for safety reasons. Same shift (6am start) when it was still dark. During this argument he did bring up the fact that I had been late! He gave out about me refusing the bus and said that the company's stance on bus camera monitors is that they're not "safety critical". I said I'd checked with the union on their stance, but he said "check again"! I was someone intimidated by him in general so when he asked me to stand back from him, I ignored him until he eventually said "you're intimidating me". At one point during the argument he said "David, we can do this if you want" as if to imply he had the upper hand in ways I wasn't aware of.

Anyway, after we argued he then gave me my bus and I went to take it. I didn't think in terms of the fact that the guy I'd just pissed off was the very person deciding which bus to give me. When getting into the bus I thought "after all that hassle I'm just gonna get in the bus and drive". I did check a few things about the bus, but I did not walk around the back. 3 minutes after I had left the depot I got a call from the control centre to the bus (not phone)... basically a different person in different office, saying that another bus driver noticed I'd no back lights on my bus. Now, a bus having no back lights would not be common with this company. I pulled over and checked and it was correct, so I returned to the depot to get another bus. Thankfully I didn't need to meet the same inspector.

Anyway I really didn't like this because if he deliberately gave me a bus with no back lights, then he'd have made a fool out of me, because I was the one harping on about safety. If I wanted to complain him, I'd have had to admit that I didn't do my walk-around check properly. I thought about it a lot for a week until I decided to go up to a manager about it. I told him my thoughts and that I'd argued with him. I wanted to know if the bus had been given out to someone lets say 20 minutes prior to me, and perhaps that driver came back to report about the lights... and therefore the inspector would've known about the fault in that bus. Knowing that it would make me look insane, I asked about CCTV in the area that would show if someone else entered the bus. I was told that they wouldn't have that. Anyway the manager reassured me that he'd be very surprised if the guy would pull that stunt.

A few weeks later my mother passed away. When I arrived back to work after that one day I was in the city centre waiting to take over a bus. I saw this inspector across the street begin to cross towards me. I didn't really know if he was coming over to me or just crossing anyway. He came right up to me to shake my hand and sympathised about my mother passing. I said thanks and he patted me on the shoulder and walked back across the street but walking in the same direction along this street. Most guys might be nervous about doing that with someone they don't get along with.

About a month later, I entered one morning, and I heard shouting. It was another more senior driver screaming at this inspector for the way he had been spoken to. This inspector didn't have much to say back. It seemed he knew he was wrong. That was interesting to see.