It was a fine day for bus services today, after the International Travel Awards Consortium awarded the Greyhound bus services the “Least Disgusting Bus Service” trophy for allowing its customers to retain at least a shred of their dignity whilst traveling on their coaches.
“The choice was clear,” said award committee member Gol Dansilver. “Not really because they provide an excellent service or because they offer competitive prices for reliable, affordable and enjoyable travel across our beautiful country, but simply because there just isn't really any meaningful competition.”
Dansilver went on to elaborate on how, in terms of offensiveness, frustration, the irrevocable hatred a mere bus can instil in your soul, and the utter disregard for Human Rights law, the choice was ultimately simple.
“If we consider how SA Chodelink can be 10 hours late and make you sit in a bus-cum-sauna (ambiguity intended) that is not only utterly repugnant but also has you fighting cockroaches for armchair space, or how Intercrap assumes everyone on board to be Christian and then dictatorially deny you that one sorrow-drowning comfort of alcohol, or even how several other buses – Shitty to Shitty, Transkak and Shittyliner – are so massively physically offensive and make you want to throw up until you pass out or die, whichever comes first to ease your hellish 14-hour suffering, then really there was no one else to confer this medal to.”
Bus travellers across South Africa resoundingly agreed with this sentiment, applauding the committee for its frankly insultingly easy decision.
“When I think back to those other sweltering sweathouses-on-wheels that are always later than the SABC’s airing of a series people enjoy watching - those 'modes of transport' that somehow always bring with them conditions a Syrian War Refugee would consider brutal and disgusting, then I don’t really see how Greyhound couldn’t have won it,” said torture victim and frequent traveller Miles Sandmiles.
Dansilver said that Greyhound should now be considered the leader of bus travel in South Africa – or at least, the least mortally affronting when you consider your alternatives.
“Even when you take into account resurgent smaller companies, like the Blunden Shuttle service, [Greyhound] still wins. Not because, as I have said many times, Greyhound is any good, but because in comparison to the poisonous and offensive business model on which these other small services operate, forcing you to pay for a full coach if you’re the only one but then not applying that same division to a full bus meaning you’ll always fork out several hundred rand no matter what, then Greyhound still takes the cake.”
However, Greyhound now reportedly has its eyes on the last shred of bus traveller, those Masochistic people who enjoy these other services.
“We want to be loved by all equally,” said Greyhound CEO Naim Dafterdogg, “which is why we’ll be introducing a service that deliberately insults, offends and disgusts you as if you’re our torture bitch in our ever-expanding slave dungeon. We’re calling it Fifty Shades of Greyhound".
