I caught the bus yesterday. I’m not sure what it’s like in the rest of the world, but busses in Wellington are notorious for their angry, mean drivers.

I’ve had drivers who gleefully pass people waiting at the bus stop, or who drive up so close behind the person stopped in front of them, I swear I’ve witness heart attacks… But this guy was different.

He LOVES driving a bus and at 5.30pm when everyone is tired and grump and dreading the 30 minute trip home before they can settle in for the night, he was a breath of fresh air. He greeted everyone with a cheerful hello, he waited to see if the person running down the street was doing so because they wanted to catch his bus, he called out the next stop, he made jokes about flowers and sparked conversations. He was polite and funny and friendly.

I heard about 3 separate conversations (between strangers) around me where people discussed whether or not they could nominate him for bus driver of the year, for the first time ever, the person who sat next to me actually smiled as she asked if it was ok if she sat next to me. As everyone boarded the bus, within seconds they cottoned onto this new happy atmosphere and visibly relaxed.

I’m not over-dramatising this, it was incredible how this one guy completely changed the culture of the bus. He made people happy and chatty. I was in shock.

As we all disembarked at various stops, instead of the usual ‘thanks driver’, people actually stopped and said ‘thanks, you made my day’, or something else they really felt.

It just reminded me of those days when you feel like ‘what can one person do?’ that actually you can do a lot. This guy proved how important his job is - in a typical day he impacts thousands of peoples lives, by being one happy bus driver, he makes a visible dent in creating a city full of happy productive people. He reminded me of the important role that each of us could play in creating better company culture or happier customers or a better life.

I’m going to try to be more like him.