What I Know: Chad Stern

Photo by: Mike MorganI’m in college still, and there are buses for the university. It’s a little bit wild. Let’s say it’s a public university with 25,000 students.

When I signed up, I didn’t realize it was going to be a crazy party on the bus every night. I mean it’s a lot better than going out and spending money to be waking up with a headache the next morning. I figure it’s a pretty decent alternative.

Technically, it’s a job, but it’s not something that I get stressed out about. I’m driving a bus full of drunk college students. And I’m a college student.

No one’s expecting me to do things that are incredibly professional. The expectations of me are not incredibly high. As long as I keep the bus on schedule and show up to work on time, that’s pretty much all they expect of me.

It’s not a matter of dealing with employees, customers or vendors. I just drive the bus. It’s just time. If there’s no one on the bus, I can just drive around in circles and get paid a little bit of money.

I don’t really consider it a job. It’s not something I have to do. The amount of money they pay me is less than I pay any of my employees. If I didn’t enjoy doing it, I could just stop and it wouldn’t make that much of a difference.

I’m 21. I started working in the industry in 2000. I have six full-time employees, plus me and a part-time mechanic.

We specialize in maintenance, primarily residential. Last year, we did $390,000.

I’m sort of a naturally serious person, sometimes a little bit too tightly wound. If I just sat there and didn’t talk to anyone and didn’t try to have a good time, it would be eight hours of boredom. Unless I make an effort to talk to people and be cordial and enjoy myself, it’s not very fun.

The reason I looked into it at first is they gave me paid CDL training. I thought that was appealing. A class B CDL will cost you $2,000 or $3,000. I thought it would be nice to be able to get paid to get the CDL.

As part of the paid training, you had to commit to driving two semesters at least 12 hours. I was only free Friday and Saturday nights. That was for the first two semesters, and I realized it was sort of enjoyable.

The first three semesters, it was Fridays 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., and Saturdays 7:30 p.m. to 4 in the morning. Sometimes there are some stragglers who are stumbling around. This semester, I’m only working on Saturday nights.

There are lots of great stories that I get to tell. You can sort of imagine the things that go on with 40 or 50 drunk kids on a bus. Sometimes there are people that are passed out.

I’m a junior, going for a degree in accounting and a minor in landscape management.