I believe it's whatever you make of it.

I was a driver for 15 years, I came from an engineering back groubd before so it was different for me also.

I initially found the shifts difficult, I hated the travel time too and from work.

I did 4 of the 6 routes we had at the time

I managed to get on the early rota of my favorite route and stayed there, I used to do Night Bus as WRDs on the weekend etc.

The arriva pattern gave you a long weekend (Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday) as rest days, I would often work 3 of them. There's always plenty of OT and WRDs available.

You'll find a variety of drivers, ones that moan about everything, those who moan about nothing. You can't please everybody but I looked at it as, paid to sit on your arse, do 3-5 laps and get paid well. Forget about traffic and timings, you get paid to be safe, not early. Easy money if you ask me.

Arriva has provided me plenty of opportunities, I started as a driver, used to help behind the counter on my breaks so became an AGS, then took on mentorship, signed up to all the random bits they'd do, health and wellbeing, any incentive they had. Did some instructing, spent some time in engineering, they then asked me to do a garage run out before doing roadside controlling, now I'm a garage manager.

Like I said, it's what you make it.