Basket.

I would love to take an ice-pick to the skulls of the idiots who every day pitifully mismanage our public transport system, and have the temerity to charge us more every year for the incompetent jobs they are doing.

Don't you ever get sick of every single bus except yours coming twice or thrice, of vastly irregular waiting times and of the ever-increasing fares without consumate improvements where it matters?

Some time ago, my brother and I concluded that if a restaurant was set up and worked exactly the way our public transport system did, it would go something like this:

- No waiters about when you need them, but other tables seem to have no trouble getting served.
- After waiting a long while for one waiter, three come to you all at once.
- Charges for the meal are made automatically, but the machine will erratically charge you more fairly often, and you will have no choice but to pay. Requests for refunds will periodically end in red tape.
- Service is slow and irregular, but restaurant has free television showing reruns of Just For Laughs and obscure Japanese anime.
- Restaurant has duty schedule pinned up but it is not followed.
- Restaurant has robotic drones that will deliver your meals automatically, but these break down often. You are charged higher prices because of these drones. Restaurant boasts sonorously and often that it is first in the world with such gadgets.
- Restaurant contemplates annual price increases. Service standards are unchanged, portion sizes are unchanged, but hey, look at those awesome service robots and the free television blaring lame old reruns all day!

Would you go to a restaurant like that?

You wouldn't, but you do everyday.