BLOG: My Time as a Tri-Met Bus Shagger
Sam Adams
Tri-Met Maintenance Supervisor Mark Nelson and his team must make sure that the buses run, so someone else can make sure they run on time.
Of the 260-odd buses under their charge at the Tri-Met Center Maintenance Shop located at SE 17th and Mall Street in Portland, each day the last one pulls in at 2:38 am and the first bus leaves the shop at 4:10 am.
Somewhere in the midst of all these bus arrival and departures, Mark and his team has to fuel, fix, collect the fare box proceeds and clean each bus. It’s a daunting task they make look pretty effortless, although they said my time at the shop last night was unusually calm and quiet.
My 6-hour shift from 6:00 pm to midnight is working as a “shagger,” or a bus cleaner.
Ok, what’s with the name of this title? It has another official sounding title, but I already forgot it.
www.dictionary.com provides 8 definitions for “shag,” none for “shagger.”
Thanks to the Austin Powers movies, most now know that “shag” is a British vulgar slang word. A “shag” is also, “A dance step of the 1930s consisting of a hop on each foot in turn.” To clean a bus requires fast footwork -- I think that the term comes from the dance step -- At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Diana is showing me the ropes of being a Tri-Met bus shagger. Diana works the swing shift for Tri-Met so she can see her kids off to school in the morning and welcome them back home in the afternoon. Her husband also works for Tri-Met as a mechanic. They work different shifts so they can take turns caring for their three kids.
“Seeing my husband for only one hour some days is the hardest part of this routine,” says Diana.
Custodial work is one of the most common jobs in Portland and one of the lowest paid. Most often, custodial salaries average around minimum wage.
I chose to work a shift a Tri-Met because they are an exception to that rule. They pay Diana and her colleagues well and offer them health insurance benefits. Diana credits the compensation and good management for the high morale at the Center Maintenance Shop.
We begin. Diana and I walk across the massive expanse of the bus yard. There nearly is a century of Portland transit history at this site: this same site used as a streetcar maintenance shop.
We find #2617. 
Diana explains to me that I have to close all the windows, and pick up any large pieces of trash. We also lift up the handicap seats and drive towards the fueling and cleaning station.
I’m wondering where the brooms are figuring I can get started as she drives; Diana says to just wait and asks if I still have my earplugs and safety glasses.
I wave at Sheri who I met a few minutes earlier in the employee break room as we pull up to the first station.
Diana opens the front and back doors of the bus. We throw the newspapers into a recycling bin.
Diana instructs me to put on my earplugs and to push a button on what looks like an elevator door with a big round hole outside the front door. I do.
The elevator doors moves toward the front door until it is sealed against the bus. That sucking
sound I hear through my ear plugs is the vacuum coming to life.
Diana hands me an air wand attached to the middle of the machine and yells over the noise and earplugs to pull the wand to the back of the bus and blow everything forward to the vacuum.
At the back of the bus, I press the trigger and the dust and garbage starts flying to the front door. I’m thinking, “I need one of these for my house.”
An empty aluminum pop can goes air borne and hits Diana; I mouth out the words, “Sorry.” She smiles and waves it off.
I finish by emptying the bus garbage cans in the vacuum. The garbage flies out of the cans vertically.
“How’d I do?”
“Good.”
“Was I slower than I need to be?”
“Oh, yes, but you will get better.”
A dozen or so buses later I am faster. I’ve also learned to mop crustified soda, freeze gum off the floor and test the handicap lift.
Between tasks, I ask Diana about her life and family.
I learn she lives in Milwaukie because she thinks the schools are better their and its centrally located to the Maintenance Shop. I am impressed when she tells me she takes her kids to volunteer with her at family homeless shelters. 
“They need to know about how others that don’t have it as good as we do, to not be afraid of people just because they are down on their luck, to help others.”
She tells me she lives to be a great Mom and spouse. I bet she is.
She says she is grateful for this job that allows her and her husband to have a financially stable family -- even with demanding schedules.
Towards the end of my shift working with her, Diana tells me she knows that if she worked her job at another employer they might not pay as well or offer benefits.
She worries about the cuts Tri-Met always has to make to balance the budget.
“My husband and I are not well-off, but these jobs allow us to have a financially stable family.”
Posted by Sam Adams on September 25, 2005
(6) Comments | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
Filed Under 100 Hours, Front Page, Southeast Portland (inner), Transportation
Comments by site visitors
Marian,
Thanks for the blog entry. We have talked about what you suggest.
I decided against it because I do not want to lie on a job application.
So, I choose to work at and thus spotlight good employers that are the exception to the rule of paying low wages and no benefits.
I have worked under the conditions you describe. Earlier in life, long before you even read my name in any newspaper, I supported myself through high school and college working at variety of restaurant service jobs.
Your email helps expand on my descriptions of how hard some of those jobs can be.
Thanks.
Sam
Posted by: Sam Adams | Oct 3, 2005 10:06:50 PM
Sam, you picked a good job at TriMet to try. I work @ Center St, ride buses a lot, and am pretty aware of many of the jobs. However, I did not realize what the shaggers do until one night when I was there at 8 pm.
I saw this big loop-de-loop of buses streaming through the yard and through the cleaning & fueling stations, with the janitors running from one bus to the next in a nicely choreographed routine. Who knew?
Also - great photos!
Posted by: Connie | Oct 5, 2005 11:57:48 AM
Great article but your grammar and punctuation are abominable! You need a proofreader!
Posted by: Marta | Oct 5, 2005 8:05:00 PM
Marta,
Ha, I never promised perfect grammer. I'll my harderest!
Sam
Posted by: Sam Adams | Oct 19, 2005 7:49:53 AM
Hi,Sam.
this is the first blog of your I have read. Very good. It is important that you stay in touch with working class roots and not forget those who labor at the bottom of the heap. Thank YOu.
Also, thank you for your stated opposition to the WalMart story in Milwaukie. You are doing what we elect officials to do - lead.
I would invite you to join the Alliance for Democracy for one of two showing of the new documary - WalMart, the High Cost of Low Price. We are showing it on SUnday Nov 13th and again on Firday, Nov 18th at the First Unitarian Church at SW 12th and Main. Doors open at 6:30, show starts at 7PM. Hope to see you and all your readers as well
Posted by: David Delk | Nov 2, 2005 9:53:42 PM
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Hey, Sam!! This is such a great idea you have, in your attempt to find out what the working poor have to go through.
This is the first blog I've read. It appears that you are interviewing people on their jobs.
It also appears that, in the custodial one as a Tri-Met bus shagger, at any rate, you have chosen a custodial job which is high paid, and therefore is not really a typical, representative custodial job.
I would like to beg that with your last "less than 30 hours" you're going to spend in your roles as one or more of the working poor, you NOT REVEAL YOURSELF as Sam Adams, nor as being a City Commissioner?
Not to anyone at the company you go to work for?
Be "just a new person on the job."
Only then will you be able to experience what these jobs are REALLY LIKE. It's not the WORK that is so bad; not even the pay -- it's the "emotional labor" that people have to put up with. The mental cruelty, the bullying, being demeaned, the "new person on the block" situation every new person must put up with -- which many of us can't take at all. How many of us go home each night crying? Or getting drunk? Or taking our frustrations out on a mate, or on our kids?
Sam, in order for you to even BEGIN to understand "working poor" type jobs, you must understand the horrors of being a grunt; a scapegoat; having no power over your life, whether you work long hours with no pay, even though this is illegal, nor over your physical or mental health.
Marian Drake
Posted by: Marian Drake | Oct 3, 2005 7:57:52 PM