Greyhound Bus Driver Abruptly Abandons Passengers -- Strands Them for Eight Hours at Truck Stop

Think you've had bad road trips? Wait until you hear this:

Forty-five passengers were stranded in the middle of nowhere for eight hours by their Greyhound bus driver.

It happened when they were only halfway along their route from Memphis, Tennessee, to St. Louis, Missouri.

“A 45-year-old veteran driver parked her bus at a truck stop outside the small town of Charleston, Missouri, late Friday and left after kicking an unruly passenger off the bus,” reports the Daily Mail.

After the driver kicked off the "unruly passenger," as all Greyhound drivers are trained to do, passengers started to object loudly. Maybe that's when she decided she had enough.

Stopping in Cape Girardeo, Missouri, about 3 hours into the four-and-a-half-hour trip, she allegedly told the passengers, “Guess what? I'm going home.”

The driver then got off the bus, locked the passengers inside, and waited on the side of the road  for someone to come pick her up.

The annoyed and confused passengers quickly called the police who got in touch with the driver and told her that she had to get back on the bus and resume driving.

The driver complied.

However, she turned the bus around and headed back towards Memphis, driving for about another 45 minutes, before she pulled off and parked the bus at a Pilot truck stop.

After she had finished parking, she exited the bus and took off in a vehicle that was waiting for her.

“In my tenure with Greyhound, I have never heard of something happening like this,” spokeswoman Maureen Richmond told the Memphis Commercial Appeal. “It’s inexcusable and certainly unprecedented.”

It took a full eight hours for another bus to come along and pick up the stranded passengers.

Instead of getting into St. Louis at about 1 in the morning, as originally planned, they did not arrive until about noon the next day.

“I was upset. I was scared because I didn't know if a new bus was going to come. They kept saying a new bus was going to come, but no buses came so we had to spend the night on the bus,” passenger Ashley Ahart told KSDK TV in St. Louis.

At this moment, Greyhound officials are not sure why the driver (who has worked for Greyhound for almost 7 years) decided to abandon the passengers. It might be safe to assume the altercation with the unruly customer and the subsequent objections from the other passengers prompted her otherwise erratic behavior.

At this moment, Greyhound officials say that she will face "disciplinary action." One can't help but assume that said actions will include a pink slip.

See the news update from St. Louis News, KSDK: