My Life Lesson Learnt in Chicago

During my year-long working holiday in America, I tried to see as many different cities as possible. I often made use of Greyhound buses, and one day, when leaving Chicago, I had a ticket for a bus that was due to leave at 4pm. I arrived at the terminal at midday, but didn’t want to walk around with all my bags, so I just sat and waited. Another lady had also arrived early, and she too decided to wait. As the afternoon wore on, crowds of people started arriving to catch the bus, and the fact that we had been waiting four hours didn’t seem to matter - the new arrivals just pushed and shoved so that we were forced right to the back of the queue. We were both furious, and the lady shouted and screamed at the conductor, demanding to be let on the bus. I kept calm and explained that we had been waiting hours. In the end, the conductor let me on to the bus, but turned the other lady away for being rude.

The lesson here is that aggressive behaviour seldom, if ever, gets you what you want. No one likes a rude person. If you want something, ask for it in an assertive, NOT aggressive, manner, always taking the feelings of the other person into account.