The drive down was great. There was one stop made at West Virginia University and we got in about an hour late due to traffic, but that was understandable. The trip was supposed to take six hours and it took seven, but whatever, traffic sucks.
The drive back, however...
First the bus was about 30 minutes late. Which wasn't that big of a deal because we figured there had been similar traffic as when we got in and was prepared for it to be a little late. No biggy.
But then, after we got on our way, several of the other passengers noticed that we didn't seem to be where we were supposed to be. For some reason we were driving around Baltimore and there was really no reason why we would be in Baltimore. Driving past it, maybe, but not through it. And we seemed to be driving around in circles. Eventually someone went up and asked the driver what was going on. And the driver said he was lost. And had been lost for the past hour and a half.
Oh.
When asked if he had a GPS, he said that he didn't.
Oh, again.
So someone with a smartphone came up and worked out with the driver where we were supposed to be headed with the GPS on her phone. We were now about two hours behind schedule because of the bus being late and him getting lost and not having a GPS. This is less understandable.
We made our pit stop and then headed up to WVU...where he got lost again trying to navigate Morgantown. We drove around in circles around a hospital parking lot a few times. One of the students went up to the front and asked if he needed directions and told him where to go, and a few times he turned the opposite direction of what she said (turned right when she said he should turn left, for instance). We eventually made it to where the college kids needed dropped off and got on our way to Pittsburgh, now almost three hours behind schedule. One of the passengers asked if the driver wanted to use his phone GPS the rest of the way because Pittsburgh is notoriously horrible to navigate if you're unfamiliar with it, and the driver flipped out and starts yelling at the passenger that it was his first time driving the route and he got lost and he couldn't help that and if he didn't like it, to get off the bus. The passenger argued back that if he had just said something about being lost and asked for help, we wouldn't have driven around in circles for hours multiple times. At this point the other passengers yelled at him to sit down so we could just go.
We ended up getting into Pittsburgh around 12:30am. We were supposed to be there around 9pm.
I really have no idea how a bus company doesn't provide their drivers with GPS, or even written directions or a map (the driver didn't have either of these, either). I guess they just told the dude directions and expected him to remember them? It makes no sense to me. I'd hate to think of what would have happened if someone hadn't have said something when they did.
Not sure if I want to trust that company, again.