E va Arias and Montserrat Ferrer are night intercity bus drivers in Barcelona and struggle with the challenges of a night job in which alcohol, disinhibition and masculinity must be added to the equation.
“The siege is daily”, points out Eva Arias. She is 40 years old and has been a bus driver for seven years; the last five in the night shift. Like many other colleagues, she moved to this complicated schedule to be able to reconcile. Mother of two boys aged 12 and 16, she starts her shift at 11pm and ends at 6am. At 9.30 he goes to bed. His idea is to wake up at 3 p.m., but he always ends up sleeping just over five hours.
Because of the harshness of the night for the biorhythm, he knows that this shift is not forever. And the harshness multiplies when the one driving the wheel is a woman. “They sit in front and don’t take their eyes off you,” explains Montserrat Ferrer, who is 57 years old and has been working nights for four years.
Eva Arias takes an N17 from Barcelona’s Plaça Catalunya to the airport, and although tonight has been quiet because it is Thursday evening, there has been a raid in Sant Cosme. “It depends on who comes in, I prefer not to even say ‘good night’, because they think that to be polite you want to hook up,” she says. “They throw the cane at you and give you the phone number, but I tell them that I’m married and that I have four children”, explains Montserrat Ferrer. She is actually separated and has two children.
Getting on a bus driven by a woman seems to give carte blanche to sexism, inappropriate comments or nasty looks. “There is always the typical man who spends the journey looking at my cleavage with an obsessed face,” explains Eva Arias. She doesn’t like being looked at like that. “They often ask you what time you finish your shift, and I just point to the ‘Do not disturb the driver’ sign,” she explains resignedly. Cars have also been placed next to the bus to make comments. “There is a lot of drooling and masculinity is daily”, explains Arias. In those moments she is tempted to ask for a change of shift.
And there is insecurity. So much so, that when Eva arrives at Plaça Catalunya she prefers not to go to the toilet, because of what might happen. The same thing happens to Montserrat, and she explains that sometimes when she is left alone with a single passenger she is “in tension”.
The rearview mirror is one of your greatest allies. They control what happens behind their backs, although it is necessary to look at them surreptitiously so as not to cross many eyes with a certain passage.
Eva also acknowledges that 90% of the people she had to remove from the bus were men. Wednesday night was not so peaceful and he had to call the police for a fight. Although she understands the reaction of the colleague who kicked out a drunken passenger who was harassing her, she tries not to leave the cabin. And even so it has not been saved from having its partition broken with blows on up to three occasions. Montserrat doesn’t come out of it either. “At most I stand up straight”, explains Eva, who regrets that on some occasions out of the 60 people in the passage no one has come out to defend her. Although there are also friendly people.
The night forces them to experience very diverse, uncomfortable and dangerous situations. Blowjobs in the back of the bus, selling drugs, fights of all kinds… Eva has once had to drive aggressively, braking, to try to stop a violent argument between a couple. And once it was his turn to activate the picón, the warning button to the switchboard and the police in the event of an emergency.
With their colleagues, men and women, they form a small family of the night shift. Eva and Montserrat’s children encourage them in their exciting profession. Eva’s youngest son always says goodbye to her with a “have a good service”. It’s what she wants every night.