Yeah. I took the bus in NY and SF and I’m also not sure why the complained. Maybe because I’m a tourist but especially in SF I had always nice interactions with the driver. Mind you I took the Bus in the City Centers. Is it that much worse in the outskirts or is it just the concept of taking a Bus with multiple other people the problem?

Service quality is just abysmal, extremely crowded at basically all times, delayed or skips your stop when your standing there, when it isn't crowded there's all sorts of other issues with the service, and this doesn't change the fact that it doesn't really take you where you want to go without transfers.

Truthfully, whenever I'm in the bay area I just find myself walking. There's a reason why e-scooters first found major adoption there.

Buses are widely perceived as signaling low socioeconomic status in the US, to the extent that it's become a self-reinforcing negative spiral. (As soon as a system loses its higher income riders due to real or perceived dangers or inconveniences, political support for tax subsidies and infrastructure investments (bus lanes etc.) tanks, quality then actually declines, rinse and repeat.)

I've taken buses in the Bay Area and New York a bunch of times and personally haven't had negative experiences (at least not compared to rail-based US transit), other than that the comfort of the buses was generally a few decades behind those in Europe. On the other hand, many of them even have Wi-Fi!