The days of surly bus drivers could be numbered with the Public Transport Board looking to run recruits through personality tests designed to weed out grouches.

Public Transportation Board Director Dan Simmons said customer relations need to be improved as complaints are too high.

He told : ?We have a good transit product out there but, in terms of interaction, we could be more consistent.

?Almost all of our complaints have something to do with personalities ? one way or another. With people saying ?they didn?t handle me right? or ?they didn?t say anything?. We have to improve our product.?

There were 193 complaints in the year from April 2003. He said PTB is generating 7.6 complaints per 100,000 miles.

?To me that?s a little bit too high,? he said. ?That averages about seven or eight complaints per month.

?Relatively speaking, it?s easier to upgrade the buses and make them smoke free and run more efficiently, that?s all technical stuff. You can train people for that.

?But when it comes to personnel and how they interact with the public? You can train for that but there are some consistencies in people?s personalities which always shine through.?

Attacking the problem at the hiring level might be the solution, however.

?We have a multi-faceted programme ? train and re-train people we have,? he said. ?Let?s choose better people and hire people with the right attributes in the first place.

?We have to be more discriminating in our hiring.

?We apply employee assistance and do the discipline thing, when it is necessary, but sometimes people have an off day and, because they are not terribly professional, they take it out on other folk.?

Mr. Simmons said he had just been to a conference about operator hiring which could help spot those likely to cause problems.

?We are looking at personality profiles,? he said. ?The State of Minnesota, years ago, had a personality inventory which was standardised testing that people were required to fill out.

?It tries to tease out your attributes and personality traits. We are now looking for something within the transit industry. Hopefully, it?s already invented, if not we will have to do it.

?Then it?s training our people to evaluate the results.?

He said the Ambassador Programme, which teaches good customer relations, was also continuing.

?We have folk going off next month to do some additional training to try to keep them current and we have some of our original presenters, who retired or moved on, who have to be replaced,? he said. ?We are in the process of doing that. We have to be a little bit more aggressive with it and we are going to do that.?