operator

customer service representative

Calgary Transit

The schedule for new operators is very difficult.  It is a 12 hour shift where if you are a new operator only get 30 hours a week minimum. So that means for a 12 hour shift you are only getting paid for 6 hours.  You will be expected to work all over the city as well for your start time during a particular day. For example you may start on standby downtown but they will send you out to the deep NW for work.  

There is no clear direction for how your transit operator job can progress both financially or through career growth.  They will indicate the hour pay structure levels but there is no clear indication on when to reach the next level.  There is no financial indication for new operators at 3 months to keep them around only a review.  The probationary period is 1 year.

You are required to learn routes via pen and paper. There is no GPS on the bus or plan to have GPS on the buses. You are not allowed to use your cellphone on the bus. 

Be prepared for an unknown schedule being a new transit operator.  You will only find out what your work is the day before at 5:30pm.  And even if you do get some work you will be on standby which is an unknow for when and where you will end up working that very night.  You could just end up sitting there for most of the night but you do get paid for that.  Or you could be told to trek across the city in order to start your evening piece of work.

The working conditions are subject to the route you are driving and at what time during the day.  The evening be prepared for handling mentally challenged individuals, homeless, drug use and drinking on the buses and finding needles on the bus. 

Supervisors are non-existent and only show up if there is a disciplinary hearing between a driver, the city, and the union.  Upper management hands are tied with funding from city council that there is no improvement to the working conditions but instead just money and people thrown at plugging problems.

Union is not beneficial at all. The structure is in place that seniority gets the best routes/timing/money first and then 75 hour operators then on the bottom of the rung the 60 hour new operators that get whatever is left over.  There are more than enough drivers that new operators should be able to get consistent route to handle at the ugliest hours at night and seniority get the AM routes.  However the union in place creates such a structure that benefits the long tenure and not beneficial to help new operators survive the struggles of the job environment.

The buses are old and very noisy which makes it difficult to maintain public interaction of daily greeting of people or being able to hear clearly if they are asking a question from you.  

Coworkers, dispatch and control departments are good people to interact with and are there to help you out if you treat them with respect and humble yourself down to acting like you don't know anything.

Public is generally good and are grateful for the job that operators do. 

A typical day at Calgary Transit as an operator would include early mornings and some late evenings while working a 12 hour split shift on days.

Have learned great coping skills while dealing with many different personalities over the course of one work day. Also coping with the motorists on the congested streets in Calgary is a learning curve of patience on it's very own.

Management can be extremely strict at times as the public perception is all that really matters to the City however it continues to make is better operator's and employee's on a daily basis.

Co-worker's are the best part of the job...i have never met such a large group of kind patient and hard-working individual's in any other position in my entire life. Most deserve a medal..

The hardest part of the job is the split shifts...it would take 18-20 years to obtain a straight shift therefore is not conducive to family or a normal life style. This is the only reason i consider leaving the industry.

The most enjoyable part of the job is in helping others. Many new faces from around the world move to our city looking for the promise land and so quite often they become lost and require direction from their friendly bus driver. We as operator's learn to share our love for people while transporting them from one place to another in a safe and timely fashion while fighting the war of traffic at the same time.

At the end of the day one is extremely fatigued but never without a feeling of purposefulness. Everybody deserves to feel a sense of accomplishment and that of be needed...

Although upon hiring you think you are coming to an organization that truly respects its employees and customers, you soon learn that this is not the case.
The shifts are horrible and seemingly designed to keep you away from loved ones for as long as possible. Every promotion that you take, is met with longer and harsher hours at work.
Typically your day will start early (get prepared for 5am starts. There will be at least a 2-way split and quite often 3-way. So be prepared to find something to do while you are NOT working. Your shift will end 12 hours later, or as close to that as possible.
Management is quite inept and working with a system that is older than dirt. It is also a system established on a para-military setting. So DO NOT step out of line.
Although there are many good co-workers there. the Union is next to useless and established to benefit the retired or nearly retired. If you work as a community shuttle driver or are new to the organization, there is no help from the Union. But they are more than happy to collect their dues.
The hardest part of the job for me was the early mornings and long days. Oh and Calgary drivers, the worse drivers i have ever seen anywhere (no joke on this). But of course it is never their fault!
I do have to admit driving the BIG buses and especially the articulated buses was a lot of fun. And every so often you would meet a wonderful Calgarian passenger that just made your day/week.

I am currently working at transit and have been for the past 15 years. I am currently a transit operator. I have did work in dispatch for a couple years. Dispatch was a great job to have, but left became 

The main issue I find with Calgary Transit is actually the operators. The high majority of operators are excellent. They care about their job and provide great service for the customers. The problem is there are a lot of operators that take advantage of Transit’s policies on sickness and their lack of discipline towards operators that break the rules. There is a large group of operators that seem to always go sick. They are allowed up to 5 days of sick leave without a doctors note. So some will go sick, and then come back for a few days. Then go sick again. This happens frequently. It really ruins this for the operators who are actually sick. 

The other issue is there are no repercussions for operators who are late or for those that just don’t show up for work. They get a report on their file, but nothing really happens to them. Maybe get spoken to by a supervisor, but nothing else. It’s really frustrating for the operators who actually do care and want to do a good job. 

I also find upper management out of touch with the issues that the operators face every day and very little seems to be done about it. 

I took phone calls from people trying to get from one place to another.  Because I'm a girl/woman, I know landmarks. 
When I tell a person to start their journey, I begin by saying something like, "Stand on the corner of 8th and 8th.  With your back against the building, the number 6 bus will come towards you from your left side.  Tell the driver you want to go to the Tim Horton's in Signal Hill, he will tell you when to get off.  When the door opens, walk straight ahead for one block - Tim Horton's will be on your right hand side."

I was precise and always pleasant.  I loved knowing that I could see the landmarks in my mind for any corner in Calgary.  I felt that was a plus for working at Calgary Transit.

A hard part of the job was working in PS100.  There were 35 monitors in there, when I started.  I think we have almost 50 now.  Part of my shift was spent watching those monitors.  I saw so many scary things, and always had to call the police to pick up a dead body, an unruly person, or a drunken soul.  I also had to call out on the PA System to get people to stop what they were doing.  It wasn't the best part of the job, but it was certainly interesting.

Although upper management believe the system operates in 21 century methods and ideas. The follow up is non-existent resulting in a early 20th century work environment.  

For example, when you hire on, management will espouse the benefits of working with the City and their progressive labour practices including their strong support of a balanced work and personal life. They truly believe this to be happening within the operation department. In fact, Operations deliberately circumvents this  by scheduling employees daily hours over a 12 hour period. It is not uncommon to leave home for work at 4am and return home at 6 pm and only be compensated for 6 hours of work. 

It is truly a totalitarian work environment with upper management blissfully ignorant of the actual goings on within the "company". 

Calgary Transit is ranked 8th in Canada as a Transit system. It is obvious to me now why this is. Being a government operation, it would defiantly benefit from a internal reorganisation.

I worked at CT for a little over two years and have many good things to say. The supervisors were friendly, compassionate and good hearted people. The staff were even better - a great group of people from all walks of life. Working in Customer Service was fun, but really unchallenging and boring, which I didn't love. Moving into the security side of things, it got interesting but very high stress. Most on call customer service reps were pushed into the security side with little understanding of the things you end up seeing. This is fine for people who handle stressful situations well. I, unfortunately, am not one of those people. The good new is they do provide stellar peer support, so if that's your jam, you'll love working here. Most staff are hired on as on-call, so you need to be available on weekends. If they like you, you get a lot of hours (and I did), so the money is great. Sadly, no benefits or other perks beyond the great (and I mean great) hourly wage. 

my typical day is still tying to find a job and trying to doing chores and running around and hoping my bad back pain doesn't start to kick in and give me problems to do anything witch it does everyday I got along with my coworkers when I was around them cuz when u drive a city bus im mostly around the public wicth ive never had a problem with the public . the hardest part of my job was putting up with my back pain when I was working and not working and saying good back to my passengers when it was route change with either city bus or school or special needs bus but when I got those routes back all my passengers were totally thrilled to have me back that was the most enjoyable part seeing there smiles everyday when I worked and when I got back on those routes.

I like the job itself, to provide good customer service, promoting a good image in peoples' eyes, driving, but I don't enjoy the scheduling, I always have to start from all over the city, headache with the place where I have to park my car, travelling time is not paid, mostly split shifts, which creates a huge waste of time and stress. The supervisor is very open minded, he always understood my personal problems and issues, trying to help me out. As hardest part of the job, I could say there are sometimes some passengers with no fare, drunks, troublemakers, you have to stay calm, not to escaladate the conflict and to find a good solution. The most enjoyable part of the job is that I love working with people and driving, which makes a perfect mixture, in one single word I love the job but I dislike the schedule and the thing that it's not possible to work as many hours as you want.

What is the best part of working at the company?
I love meeting new people and I love that it’s a very stable job. I also love how you have the varieties of different shifts and times that you can pick from to start and finish at

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
When people don’t appreciate the services provided for them especially when you went out of your way to help them.  

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
I find for the most part it’s respectful but you do have the odd person or persons that do whatever they feel whenever 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Normal until rush hr. That’s usually when I see unusual things happen

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Operator 3 salaries reported	$30.42 per hour
Customer service representative 1 salary reported	$32.00 per hour

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