Photos by Lands of Void
Ceres: What brought you to this job?
Sipriana: Well, I used to work for the Irvine Unified School District; I drove a school bus for six years. Then, I went through a divorce and was left with three little babies. I had to find myself a real job with benefits, and OCTA, which was OCTD at the time, hired me. I’ve been with them since 1989.
Ceres: What is the most difficult thing to deal with as a female operator?
Sipriana: You might think that it is the people, the passengers, but they're not. I'm a very
positive person, so to me it is more the traffic, and the road construction because I like to get everybody where they need to be on time.
Ceres: Do you think that it is more difficult to be a bus driver in Los Angeles than it is in Orange County?
Sipriana: I think everywhere is the same. I don't know if it's the drugs that are out there, or that a lot of people are just not in their right mind, or people that may forget to take their medication. I can’t really say that it's more difficult here or in LA or anywhere. But at the end, it's just the way sometimes we carry ourselves or relate to people. If you treat people with respect, you’d be amazed the collaboration you get from them because, sometimes, a lot of people out there, all they need is just to be acknowledged, and to be
respected. With experience, and I guess patience, you learn to avoid certain situations. Sometimes, you can’t pay too much attention to some passengers, as long as they're not hurting anyone else or themselves. They can scream all they want, and they can talk to themselves, and answer themselves, and if some of them get a little aggressive, they’re usually not aggressive to the other passengers, but just to the chair next to them. And, that's okay with me. You’d be stunned that when their bus stop comes up, they come down to earth and they get off.
Ceres: You’ve been doing that job for a long time. Have you seen anything change over the years?
Sipriana: When I first started here there weren’t too many women. That was the difference. A lot of passengers, then, thought that they could just get away with stuff, because, you’re a woman,
"If you treat people with respect, you’d be amazed the collaboration you get from them..."
Sipriana Farrell
was born in Mexico. She came to the United States at a very young age. She attended Irvine High School, and then Tustin High from which she graduated. She went to Santa Ana Junior college, but left before graduating. She has been a bus operator for OCTA for close to 27 years.
42 - Ceres Magazine - Winter 2016