Matt Pottie started working at Metro Transit just over two weeks ago, but the rookie was waving the union flag proudly at the Dartmouth Bus Terminal on Thursday morning.

“It’s going pretty good. Traffic’s pretty backed up. Everyone’s feeling pretty good here though,” he said.

Drivers were supportive, but many people who had to walk to work were disgruntled, he said.

“You hear that?” said bus driver Nathan Clark, referring to the multitude of beeping car horns. “That’s been going on all morning.”

Clark, operating on less than two hours sleep, said he was truly shocked to hear in the early morning hours Thursday that transit workers were going on strike.

“From what we were being told the last minute negotiations weren’t negotiations, it was take it or leave it. I can’t understand it ‘ why let the citizens go through all this?” he said.

Rostering, a method of scheduling shifts, is one of the last remaining big issues and Clark said it is a big deal for drivers. In the current system, Clark, who has worked at Metro Transit for two years, said he could get his weekends off in another two or three years.

“If rostering comes into effect, I could be 45 before I get weekends and I’m 26 now.”

Nobody on the picket line knows how long the strike will last but many are digging in.

“We’re all kind of bracing for something long but I don’t think anybody wants that, us or them. We don’t really know how long it’s going to last,” Clark said.

“I wonder how I’m going to pay my bills, but Ken (Wilson, union president) and the whole executive has let us know the potential for what they’re offering and, from what we’ve been told, it would really mess us up.”