Michael R. Brown

A city bus driver in Japan draped a blue cloth over the coin box beside his steering wheel and opened the doors for the morning rush hour. His union and the bus company's management had reached a bitter deadlock over wages and job security, and the drivers had officially voted to go on strike that morning. In almost every country on earth, a transit strike means locking the depot gates, shutting down the city, and leaving thousands of ordinary nurses, students, and elderly hospital patients stranded on the curb in the cold. The Japanese bus drivers decided that punishing innocent neighbors was a dishonorable way to win an argument with their bosses. So every single driver showed up at dawn in a pressed uniform, inspected their tires, pulled out of the depot right on the minute, and drove every route on schedule, while blocking the fare machine with a blanket so every passenger rode completely free of charge. Management lost a fortune in fuel and ticket revenue without a single grandmother missing her doctor's appointment or a single kid being late for school. You know a society has reached a rare level of grace when even a worker's protest is designed to protect the stranger waiting at the bus stop.