My 5-day walking vacation on The Dutch Coastal Path is over. In Burg Haamstede I get into the city bus that will take me home, rested and relaxed. Already after 10 seconds I feel car sick. This is related one to one with the brusque driving of the driver. He curses and rants at all the vacationers who unsuspectingly and carefree cycle in front of his bus. Every time he sees a gap to overtake, he crushes his gas pedal and swings his bus from side to side, ignoring snappy speed bumps in the road surface. I feel the adrenaline shoot up in my body. It's everything I don't feel like doing, after this fine and relaxing week. As I contemplate getting off at the next stop and then just wait half an hour for the next bus, he goes out of his way again against a cyclist. And I hear myself shouting through the bus, "What are you doing fucked up man, stop it!!!"

He engages me in his frustrations; how difficult it is to do his job well, to drive on time in an infrastructure that is increasingly burdened with tourists. I understand. And yet I'm glad when I can change trains in Zierikzee.

The bus driver I meet there is shouting some directions to a group of disembarking young people for the platform where they should be for their next bus. What a contrast to her predecessor!

She greets me warmly. I tell her, "What a difference from your colleague I just met!"

She is immediately interested. "Oh really? Do you know what airline he worked for?"

I didn't pay attention, but he was wearing a different color blouse than she was.

She says she herself made the switch last year from a large national carrier, to a smaller family-owned business. "I was almost devastated by the manager I had there." she says. "I've enjoyed being on the bus since 2006, driven everywhere, but with him I went to work every day with a stone in my stomach. I never call in sick, never. But there I was close to falling over. Then I thought: Eug(enie), get out of there."

"Now I've been at V.O. for a year, and you know what it is there? There they still really love their profession. The director, who has had a brain hemorrhage himself, regularly asks me how I'm doing and whether I'm enjoying myself. Well, you just want to drive for that, don't you? If they call me, I'm there, even if I was actually free".  

My HR heart jumps open and I ask her why else it's such a pleasure to work at V.O. It's as if I throw in a quarter. Enthusiastically, she lists one example after another of being a good employer. From caring for sick colleagues to providing good, clean work materials. Broken parts are replaced immediately. The bus does indeed look spotless and new. It appears to have been driving around for 10 years. She explains that every evening she cleans and tidies her bus. You automatically start doing that if the company also thinks about good material.

But what she likes best about her employer is the human touch. She says from the bottom of her heart that they are not so complicated about rules here: " Look, I think: there should be rules, but you have to keep thinking. With me, the passenger always comes first. The other day I had a little old lady with a rollator, with mobility problems. My shift was already over. And I saw the bus in front of me just close its doors and drive off in front of her, because she was just too late. I really can't accept that. I say to the lady: where do you have to go? Do you have to be at the market? Get in, I'll take you.

She laughs infectiously as she tells me that she did have to show up at the office the next day. Because she drove across town with the "no service" sign above her bus. "I had to explain that."

But she would do it exactly the same way next time.

Her employer understands that. There, they understand that drivers are professionals, who know better than anyone what works and what doesn't. There, they listen to their drivers' input, whether it's about reasonable driving schedules or the company clothing you wear.

Just before dropping me off at my final destination, she chuckles and tells me that her previous manager will soon no longer have much to manage: "They are all coming to work here. And the joke is, now they have to hire us again, otherwise they won't get their lines filled hahaha well very nice day and see you soon".

I say goodbye and realize: being a good employer really does make the world a better place.

Even for the passenger. Just for the passenger.