Yes, I agree. It's generally not the kids who are annoying me. They are kids. It's the parents. Sorry, but the whole thing about waiting with your kid for the bus and being there to get him/her every single day is, in my mind another example of helicopter parenting. The prolonged goodbyes, hugs that make it look like the kid is going away for 2 months, etc. just drives me nuts.
In my mind, parents just see this as a socializing time with other parents, and are not aware at all about what's going on around them, i.e., there are lots of people waiting behind the bus. Yes, I want to get to work or wherever I am going. If that's impatient, so be it.
Am I the *only* person who didn't sit with my kids in the car while waiting for the bus? When they were older, if they needed to be at school early for work, or projects, I would drive them, even though it was totally in the opposite direction of where I went.
One time DS #2 missed the bus in HS, because of his own laziness. We watched through the window, as he ran off somewhere (school was about 5 miles away). We never knew what happened, or where he went, but later found out that the bus actually made a stop at the other end of our neighborhood, about 3 minutes later, so he ran over there. Of course he was a teenager, but in our house, we had alarms set to warn them that the bus was coming in 5 minutes and that was when they had to put on their coats, get their stuff, and go stand in the driveway. This started when they were 10 and 8, when they told us that we did not have to be there when they left and they refused to go to the babysitter in the morning.