Yahoo Finance 'Very, very endearing’: U.S. woman's TikTok video showing grateful Canadian transit riders draws praise around the world
A U.S. woman says she’s really surprised a video she posted to TikTok from her time in Victoria, British Columbia has blown-up online.
In the video, Corrin Carlson captures BC transit passengers thanking the driver as they get off the bus.
The video, which was posted to Carlson's TikTok account @thefatpassport on Monday, has already surpassed seven million views, over 900K likes, and 32K comments.
Carlson says she was in Victoria with her partner, who used to live in the Canadian city, when she saw a bus with the sign ‘sorry out of service.’
“I thought it was very, very cute,” she says in her interview with Yahoo Canada. “To me it seemed very Canadian as an American to apologize for not being in service.”
Her partner’s friends told her to just wait until she gets on the bus to see riders thanking the driver when getting off the bus.
“I got onto the bus kind of expecting it to happen,” she says. “Then when it did, I just thought it was very, very endearing.”
Carlson says she used to live in New York, where she would personally thank the bus driver when she would get off near the front, but no one yells 'thank you' from the back of the bus like in Victoria.
“Every single person was doing it and they all were many different ages of people doing it as well,” she adds.
TikTok video sees reaction from around the world
With views growing by the hour, Carlson says the TikTok video has become her most-viewed video.
She posted it because she says she thought it was “funny and endearing” and assumed it would just be a “niche audience that appreciated it.”
However, the reaction has come from people all around the world sharing their own experiences on public transit.
One TikTok comment writes, “in Australia it’s SHAMEFUL if you don’t thank the driver.”
Several people from Ireland, the U.K. and Scotland also write that it’s a common thing to do in those countries.
“If you don’t say thank you to the bus driver in New Zealand you can just feel the dirty looks the other passengers give you,” another comment reads.
While some people commented that they also do this elsewhere in Canada, according to one person, it's not a thing in Quebec.
As for Carlson's reaction to the comments, she says the video brings a “piece of humanity” to a different place in the world that she didn’t expect to connect with.
“When I look back at other videos that I have go viral, the theme in all of them [...] it’s something that people can connect to their own lives too and that's what like drives the comments, which then drives the growth,” she says.
BC Transit thanks riders for ongoing support
BC Transit is reacting to the video, telling Yahoo Canada it’s bringing a lot of positive attention to the organization.
Jamie Weiss, BC Transit’s senior media relations and public affairs advisor, says the relationship BC Transit drivers have with their customers “is really important to them” and these types of greetings are “greatly appreciated.”
“We realize this isn’t something that happens everywhere, and BC Transit wants to say thank you to all our customers that keep this important tradition going,” he adds.
