Life as a Dublin Bus driver: ‘A bus went by with Join Dublin Bus on it. It was like a eureka moment’

If you’ve ever wondered why Dublin Bus persists with all the adverts on its buses telling the world it is hiring, meet Karl King McDonnell. He recalls the day he decided to leave the logistics company he used to work for.They had been short of staff for six months or so, and those who were left were having to make up the shortfall. On the day in question, King McDonnell was in a fridge labelling 4,000 yoghurts. “Usually, there’d be a load of us doing it, and we’d knock it out in an hour, but it was just me.”He approached his manager about when new staff would be hired and was told they were trying, to be patient, but then two articulated lorries arrived in the warehouse. He realised he’d be emptying them alone too.“I said there and then I’d be leaving; I was going to look for something else. Then a bus went by with Join Dublin Bus on it. It was like a eureka moment.”It’s two years on and he hasn’t looked back, he says. The driving part came easy enough as he’d driven trucks for the logistics company. Shifts were nothing new either, because he’d had a spell at Tesco where the first delivery could be at 5am or 6am. The money, about €50,000 per annum including shift allowances and Sunday premiums, is better than he’d been on. “And I discovered something about myself,” he says. “I get a kick out of helping people, whether it’s bringing some school kids to the zoo, or old people to the hospital. It’s nice. I didn’t know that about myself.”He has learned a few phrases in different languages to field common queries at the airport, one of the routes he sometimes covers, and developed some strategies for de-escalating potentially difficult situations with troublesome passengers. He says, with a considerable sense of empathy, that “you don’t know what’s happened to them in their day”.He says he gets “a buzz” out of the busy days, getting big crowds to concerts and the like, and is clearly taken with the advice and support he has received from colleagues: “It’s like family,” he says.Dublin Bus chief people officer Barbara Carroll with driver Carl King McDonnell at Summerhill Garage, Mountjoy Square. Photograph: Alan Betson