Hours and hours, stranded. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

D.C. bus drivers, here's an example of what not to do in what is essentially a Thanksgiving transit horror story. In short, a Greyhound bus driver stopped in the middle of rural Missouri, and, frustrated with her passengers, simply locked the bus at a truck-stop and left in the night. The riders spent their entire evening stranded inside the vehicle hours away from their destination of St. Louis.

The bus, traveling from Memphis, had experienced the prickly driver's behavior before. She'd already locked the bus once before and then finally left. Enough was enough, I suppose. Can you imagine waiting for the driver to return? And then no one shows up. I find myself wondering what thoughts ran through the driver's head then and wondering what she did. The District's buses have issues but none like this that I know about. As we all recall, D.C. has its own way of dealing with rowdy passengers. These Greyhound customers, at least, received a refund after such unconventional disciplinary action but arrived at their destination more than half a day late. Let's hope they all feast on the greatest of Thanksgiving meals this week to help forget the trauma.

St. Louis-based KDSK has details on the alarming incident, in which one passenger says she felt like she was being "punked":