No, Mr Sugarman wasn’t my drug dealer, starring in a stereotypical mafia movie from the part of Hollywood that pretends to know Italy. Neither was I his prostitute or stripper, desperate for rescue in a situation that might, no matter if fictive or not, create a really good story that’s worth writing about. The story of Mr Sugarman and I is just a product of a day where the level of my stupidity was particularly strong, sprinkled with some bad luck and an unstable communication process. Perhaps it would suit a new empowering Netflix series about a naïve and hopeful foreign girl, who listened to her gut and left her home country to create a new life for herself, despite the risks of being kidnapped and killed at some point. What’s quite amusing about this is that however horrible this day was, if I could relive it again, I wouldn’t have done anything differently.
On a Wednesday morning, around quarter to way too early, I could see the reflection of someone I wasn't able to recognise in the shop windows I was passing by. Some girl with bags under her eyes that looked like they belonged to an overwhelmed single mother with two divorces and three kids stared back at me in disbelief. How did we get there? Didn’t my discipline and self-control get me home early yesterday night, so I could at least look human for my job interview the following day? I told my hair to behave by forcing it into a lower bun, only for it to stick out at all possible edges and make me look as if I had spent the night in Greggs when I exited. At least I realised I should leave the whole I-woke-up-like-this-look to models that were styled like this for 2 hours around 4 hours after they woke up. The four digits on the screen at the bus stop told me to relax, because I was more than just in time to catch the bus I was supposed to take to be half an hour early for my interview (my Germanness speaks to me in cases like this). I decided to just stand there, because sitting down wasn’t necessary when there’s only fifteen minutes left for me to stare awkwardly at nothing else but other people around me, just like all the other people around me did.
Five minutes had passed since I had expected the bus to be there to take me to another great interview that would result in them never calling me back. Three impatient people had left during that time, but I was convinced it was right to blame a bus system that's almost as inadequate as Britain's national health service. I told myself the bus would come just in time for me to be at least fifteen minutes early for my interview. It was all good. I just needed to relax and try to look cool while listening to music with my headphones on. Good Things (Come To Those Who Wait) by the Cupids was keeping me company while also reinforcing my belief that the bus would come eventually. After another five minutes had passed by, I started to wonder whether bad things would also come to those who wait and whether I was fortunate enough to find out.
Just like someone accepting their fate when realising their Tinder date was a horrible mistake and they’re already thinking about bathroom windows to escape through, I accepted mine, but decided strong-mindedly to wait around forty minutes to take the next bus. Yes, I would be incredibly late and make a horrible first impression, but I had come too far to give up now. I was deliberating whether I should just call the restaurant I had sent my application to and tell them about my horrible situation, but my repulsiveness against speaking on the phone publicly convinced me it was better to do it after I would go off the bus. Stupid little devil on my shoulder, can’t you just go die with all my other insecurities?
Finally, the right bus had arrived and I unlocked my phone to show the bus driver the exact location I had to get to, asking him to give me a sign as soon as we'd arrive at the right bus stop. After a couple of seconds of confusion and a handful of people queuing up behind me, he smiled and agreed he understood what I was trying to say and that he’d be more than happy to help me out, since I had never been in that area before. With relief and my headphones covering my ears, I sat down on one of the seats in the middle of the bus (I wasn’t cool enough for the back but also not close enough to death for the front) and waited for the friendly chap to give me a sign.
After perhaps twenty minutes, I unlocked my phone, used data I didn’t have but needed to check where I was. With confidence, I noticed there was only a couple of minutes left of my bus journey. Looking outside of the window and seeing all kinds of landscapes, varying from fields of cows and oases of big factories and signs of brand names, made it hard to believe that there was a restaurant nearby that I’d potentially work in. I unlocked my phone again. My headphones had long ago been stored in my bag so I’d be able to hear the bus driver’s sign, but there was another blue sign I wasn’t too keen on being able to see in that moment. The blue arrow on my map indicated that we were about ten minutes away from the restaurant, with no bus stop in walking distance. Perhaps it was just the bus route that made the driver drive other places, before it got to my stop. It could also be that I had typed in the wrong restaurant, so I double-checked and refreshed the route on my map again. It was probably just a stupid mistake and there was no need to panic. It might, however, also have been the case that I was totally and absolutely fucking lost.
I stormed to the front of the bus, as if that would make me get to the right bus stop any faster, and told the bus driver about my worries. “Oh, I didn’t realise that’s where you wanted to go!” I stared at him in complete shock. “Well, I’m really sorry about that, if you would’ve told me you’d recognise something in the area that indicates where you needed to get off, it would’ve been a little easier to get you to the right stop”. I couldn’t be mad at that lovely, grinning bus driver, who could’ve also just been taking the piss, because that’s the only kind of entertainment he gets out of his job. “It’s alright, I’ll just get off at the next stop and try to get back again”, I told him, as if it wasn’t a big deal that I definitely wouldn’t make it to my interview and my chances of getting the job just dropped from ten percent to minus twenty.
Having arrived at the next bus stop, I asked him “Could you tell me when the next bus to Peterborough leaves from this stop? Is it going to take long?” With no worries in the world and pretending not to be in a hurry, he said “Let me just check that for you, I’ve got a couple of time tables in here” What must’ve been perhaps thirty seconds felt like five minutes and a computer update (the ones you always skip so they can come back four hours later). “I’ve got them somewhere around here… Some people needed them yesterday so I don’t really know where I left the rest” When he finally found one in the exact opposite equivalent to Usain Bolt’s highest speed, he tapped the time table with his index finger and said “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for around half an hour to get the next one. There’s a bus stop on the other side of the road this way”, he pointed towards the direction we had come from, “but there’s a bus shelter so it should be alright to wait there for a bit. I’m sorry you didn’t get off at the right stop.” With a big, fake ass smile on my face, but a genuine ‘oh fuck it’ attitude, I told him it was alright and that I’d just get back home. Half an hour wasn’t that long after all, and with the same confidence that had tricked me so many times before, I exited the bus and made my way to the stop on the opposite side.
The shelter was actually as much of a saviour as I was hoping it’d be. It was as windy as it always is whenever you’re waiting outside in the cold on a miserable day, and the sun slightly peaked through the clouds, teasing me with its warmth. It’s almost as if it was mocking me by making me believe it’d finally come out and share some sunlight with me, only to disappear behind the clouds again. I was waiting for it to become 11:14, since that’s when the bus driver told me the bus would arrive at my stop. While I was waiting, I decided to give the restaurant a call and give them an explanation that could've been slightly further from the truth. “Yeah you’re running a bit late…”, my former potential employer told me. “Will you still be able to make it today?” Instead of arranging another time, telling him I could pop in later, or even just explaining that I wouldn’t make it today, for some reason I decided to spice up my explanation with some lies: “Well, actually, another restaurant called me around ten minutes ago and offered me to do a trial shift. It’s also closer to where I live, so it’s really more convenient for me to try to get work there.” At this point I was angrily kicking the dust in front of my feet, feeling frustrated over my inability to act like most average, sane people. “But thank you anyways, and good luck! I’m sure you’ll find someone else.” As if I could've seen him in front of me, shaking his head and rolling his eyes, I could tell he was clearly fed up with my shit already, so he ended the conversation with an unnecessary amount of yes’es and thank you’s and bye’s, clearly to make me get off the phone as quickly as possible. So there I was, jobless and hopeless, standing at a bus stop in the part of middle of nowhere that I’d never been to, waiting for a bus that I wasn’t even sure would ever come.
After my phone call, I sat down again to read, only to give myself a feeling of doing somewhat productive and to distract myself from the discomfort of having to wait. Looking at the screen on my phone as if constantly checking the time would make it fly faster, I noticed it was already 11:07, so I decided to stand in front of the shelter in around three minutes time to get ready to take the bus back home. I’d probably read two more pages or so, I told myself, and midway through the first page, I saw a bus driving past me with a speed I didn’t even know was allowed in the UK. However, it wasn’t so much the fact that it was a bus driver pretending to play GTA irl that surprised me. It was the moment of realisation when I saw that it had my bus number displayed on the back that made me scream out an extraordinarily loud “FUUUUUUUUCK!” while throwing all my stuff on the ground.
11:08, and the bus had driven past me, leaving me with the option to wait for another hour or simply walk back myself, which would’ve taken me around the same time. Only to check where my genius failed me, I took a look at the time table at the bus stop, and screamed out another “are you FUCKING KIDDING ME” when I realised the bus driver had told me the times for another stop, where the bus would’ve in fact stopped at 11:14. Unfortunately, his index finger had missed the correct place by one stop. At this point, I was already laughing at my stupidity and the situation I had put myself in. It was the irony of me telling everyone I’d leave early the night before, because I was “going to have a job interview the following day”, only to end up being exhausted and frustrated at some bus stop that’s probably the place of an infinite amount of horror stories. To rebel against the idea of having to wait for another hour, I decided to go for a walk instead. Who knows, maybe that would only lead me to miss the next bus, too. But if I’m honest, at that point, I had approximately zero fucks left to give, so with my bag hanging from my shoulder, and my arms crossed in front of me in a way that it looked like I was hugging myself like a mother trying to comfort her child, I started walking. It couldn’t get any worse from there anyway.
