Getting there, they say, is half the fun. If Tom Tompkins, a.k.a. Tommy Transit continues to have his way, getting there may even become three quarters of it.
Altruism. Tommy learned it from an early age when he saw his father help a woman struggling with her groceries. He asked his father who the woman was. ‘I have no idea’ came the reply. That example of humanity, of helping for its own sake and not for the feeling of reward was not lost on young Tommy.
Tommy’s father was from the old school, the hard knocks one. His tender, compassionate side was glued to another side, a practical, financially prudent one. Imagine if Francis of Assisi and Warren Buffet had a baby. Okay, imagine it’s an adoption: equal parts selfless empathy and fiscal responsibility. When Tommy went to work at the ripe, young age of 45 for Vancouver Transit, it was his father’s words of advice that echoed in his own aha! moment: Put in your time. Get a pension.
When Tommy found himself behind the wheel driving for the Vancouver Transit System, he encountered all sorts of people. It dawned on him that a certain sense of joy was lacking in so many. He had an epiphany: what, he thought, if I could brighten the day of a single passenger? With about 150,000 riders per year on his bus alone? Tommy knew he had a large test sample.
“You touch literally thousands of lives every day,” says Tommy. “I have personally acknowledged over 1.9 million people over the years. Anything to let people know that they’ve been seen.”
Someone else in Tom’s position may not have taken up the cause of spreading happiness. And you can’t really fault them for it. After all, the bus operator’s responsibility is to drive the vehicle and get its occupants safely to their destinations. It isn’t in their job description to be comedian and counsellor, let alone comrade, comforter, and confidante. But Tom’s parents had set an early example of thoughtfulness toward others. And the perfect situation to put it into place and practice had presented itself.
“What I used to do… we have a speaker system in the bus. Now they have an automated system where they call out the stops… But before I left, part of our job description was you had to call out the stops. In the process of doing that I realized I had a captive audience. A fully loaded 60-foot bus would have a hundred people in it. So, I’d pick up the phone and I’d say ‘This is your driver with a little thought for the day, and I hope it helps you on your way. Keep in mind there are a lot more people in the world looking for the right person than there are actually trying to be the right person… Thanks a lot for travelling with transit. Hope to see you again. Watch your step.’”
Tommy would do this 26 times a day. You might think it would get monotonous. Not so. Each ‘Thank you’ and ‘Watch your step’ came with a different thought, a little pearl of wisdom or whimsy to set his passengers on the right path. Riders began coming to him with quotes and books that Tommy could share with their fellow commuters.
“My desire to communicate and have those people have a good day was paramount,” he says. “When I acknowledged people, I could see in their eyes how they hungered for that.”
The hunger Tommy saw was what needed satisfying. His solution? Verbal candy.
“There was always an interaction with me. A woman got in with a red scarf one day. I flipped it up over her shoulder and asked her if she knew she was in the paper that day? I grabbed the newspaper and read ‘Women who wear red are far more attractive to men. Look at that,’ I told her, ‘you’re on the front page.’ She got a giggle out of it and said something really nice back to me,” recalls Tommy.
The exchange was one of thousands Tommy had with his passengers. For him, they became simply anecdotes, small memories to chew on, but there is no telling the impact they may have had on the candy’s recipient. Kind words are like gum drops, and they are easily understood, digested, and remembered. Tommy would urge us all to keep them in our back pockets and throw them around like… well… candy.
***
GALIANO ISLAND
Galiano Island is just off the coast of Vancouver. About a thousand or so people inhabit its 60 square kilometres. The irony is that with a name like Galiano, there is but a single pub on the island. It’s called The Hummingbird Pub and it’s a hike from Montague Harbour.
There is no transit system on the island, so the pub uses a converted school bus to bring thirsty sailors from the harbour five kilometers away for food and drink. Guess who drives the bus. That’s right. Tommy has retired from Vancouver Transit, and he’s collecting a pension. He drives between five and seven thousand people annually. Just when he thought he was out, they pulled him back in! Truth is he went quite willingly.
A drummer in a former life, Tommy has, piece by piece, assembled a makeshift cockpit percussion outfit even Buddy Rich would have been proud to get behind. It’s a mix of tambourines and symbols, cowbells and maracas. Even the Latin American güiro with its ratchety rhythmic sound makes an appearance. Well, it’s actually the knurled handle of the mechanism that opens the bus door. Tommy runs a stick across it.
“My left hand never leaves the steering wheel — that’s my professional side. And the right side is pounding on the drum kit around me. It drives people crazy. They love it. I tell them it’s a symbol of things to come,” smiles Tommy.
Insert rimshot here.
“There are two wooden speakers on either side of the bus in the corners, so I put up a shower curtain rod, and I’ve got $700 or $800 worth of instruments hanging off the rod. It’s wired to the ceiling with screws. If it ever comes down, whoever is sitting behind me is driving,” jokes Tommy.
Tommy realized tapping their toes and banging on the seats in front of them wasn’t going to cut it for the rolling audience, so he went out and bought a couple hundred dollars’ worth of the same percussion instruments he’d been banging away on. Now he hands them out to pub goers when they board the bus. A few rows of seats taken out from the back of the bus means there is even room for a little dance floor.
“I put some plastic milk crates in the back and covered them with rugs. People will get on the bus and actually run to the back of the bus to get those seats. And I’m not talking about kids. I mean 30, 40, and 50-year-olds, and they’re running to the back of the bus,” laughs Tommy. “I get the music pounding and everyone is singing and clapping.”
“It’s an interesting demographic because I’m meeting people who come in on their own boats. They sail in Europe, South America, etc. …and they fly here to visit friends and charter boats. They are, for the most part, retired, and they have lots of money.”
“I’ve had groups come up from Colorado — I don’t know where you sail down there — and they chartered five or six boats and there are six or eight couples that come in as a small social club… they’re partying before I even pick them up. The beauty of this as opposed to the city where people are going to work and don’t want to go to work… on the island, on The Hummingbird Pub bus, they’ve got money, they’re travelling, they’re on holidays, they’re in a really good mood… they get on my bus, and I blow their minds.”
You’re starting to get the picture. Not exactly an Aerosmith tour bus, but…
Tommy has parlayed his driving gig and meeting people on the bus into a book Bus Tales: How to Change the World from 9 to 5 and speaking gigs where he is keen to engage his listeners with his over-arching aesthetic — acknowledge people and realize all you have to be grateful for.
“The people who hire me to speak see how I am and how I interact with people. And they run companies whose employees work with the public. They want to know how I deal with so many people in such a positive way that the media would have me on the six o’clock news… they want me to impart that spark to their people,” says Tommy.
Tommy takes all the humour very seriously. It’s not merely a means to an end, but an end for Tommy in and of itself. Kindness is the means to more kindness. The end.
“When I realized I was meeting more people than the pope, the president, and the queen, I lost sleep for two weeks trying to figure out what I could do to personally make a difference.”
While in a vocation, i.e., transit driver, Tommy found his avocation, and subsequently turned that passion into a vocation. Twisted, but you have to meet Tommy! As for the speaking gigs, Tommy exudes a philosophical down-to-earthiness. He’s not preaching from a pulpit.
“It’s not so much about turning people into a bunch of acknowledgers but, in the process of doing that whether they did it verbally or not, was to seek gratitude and to be grateful for the job that they had and be grateful for the people that you work with and improve your attitude toward getting up every day with a purpose as opposed to the guy with the bumper sticker that says, I’m not in a hurry. I’m on my way to work.”
I’m not the first nor will I be the last to say it — life is a journey. We can agree to disagree on the destination, but getting there should be, at the very least, half the fun. For over 20 years, Tommy’s message has been a simple one: be kind. Acknowledge the value in others. Bring a smile to their faces. We are all on the same bus. And watch your step.
“When you do something and you come from goodness, you come from the heart all the time; and when you have a focused intention to make a difference in the world, a positive one, doors open,” says Tommy.
Doors open indeed.
SNAPSHOT
What advice would you give to your 20-year-old self?
“I’d pay more attention to my ears than my mouth. I wouldn’t say I didn’t listen, but I didn’t listen deeply enough. Just listen. Listen to people. By listening you’ll see value for yourself.”
Who or what influenced you most and why?
“My parents. And I have to say my parents as opposed to one or the other. My dad. He taught me to go above and beyond of what you’re expected. Do more than your job entails. Do it with joy and be of service. As for my mom, I was entering a speaking contest at school and I was a bit of a shy kid and really nervous. ‘Picture the audience naked,’ she said. I did, and I won. She said I could do and be anything I wanted.”
How do you keep yourself grounded?
“For the last 10 months I’ve finally embraced and practiced meditation. Prior to that, when we start our buses in the morning, there is a space of about three to four minutes where you have to drain the compressor, which operates the doors and the brakes, and you have to wait there with your foot on the brake waiting for the compressor to build back up. I’d go through a series of thoughts, the first being ‘this is going to be an amazing day. I’m going to get people safely to where they’re going. I’m going to have fun doing it, and I’m going to meet some incredible people.’”
What’s next?
“Michele Hall [Tom’s wife] and I founded an online support group called Bus Drivers on a Mission and the purpose of it is to help address psychological issues that all bus operators all over the world face every day, every shift, many of which are not addressed by their companies. When I left the bus company, it was the camaraderie I missed most. I know the struggles my fellow drivers face, and we hope this passion project of ours can do some good.”
To learn more, visit http://busdriversonamission.com/
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