Aggressive experience with a Groome Transportation driver from PHX to Prescott
I wanted to post this both as a warning to people who use Groome between Sky Harbor and Prescott and because I’ve already reported it directly to the company.
I rode Groome into Prescott on Friday. When we reached my stop, I exited through the sliding passenger door. Because we were parked on an incline, the door slid shut behind me. I was in a hurry to get to my destination and walked to the rear of the van and opened the cargo door to retrieve my bag.
I apparently was not supposed to open that door. I had not seen any instruction saying so.
The driver, Mike T., immediately came very close to me and said, in substance, “You need to quit touching shit, keep the fuck out of my way, and let me do my fucking job.”
I was genuinely confused by how quickly the interaction had escalated. I apologized and told him I hadn’t known passengers weren’t supposed to touch the rear door. He told me there were signs all over the van. I said I hadn’t seen one addressing that.
He pulled out a bag and asked which one was mine. I told him it was the bag he was holding. He handed it to me, then again moved very close to my face and said “Get a life” before walking away.
At that point I told him “fuck you” and left. I’m including that because I don’t want to sanitize my own part of the interaction.
What makes this more concerning is that before any of this happened, I had watched the same driver sharply berate a younger man at the airport who had apparently gotten onto the wrong shuttle by mistake. So my interaction did not feel like an isolated moment of frustration.
I’ve already spoken with Groome dispatch and submitted written feedback through their post-trip survey. I’m waiting to see how the company responds. I’ll update this post if they take meaningful action.
I’m not arguing that passengers should open whatever doors they want on a commercial vehicle. If I wasn’t supposed to open the cargo door, telling me that would have been entirely reasonable. Getting inches from a passenger and repeatedly directing profanity at him over that mistake was not.