This is something I had to put up with in my previous position, where I worked in the Admissions Department of a cancer hospital. We had our own minibus which held 15, and used the ambulance service's volunteer drivers and minibus service to get our patients to and from their radiotherapy/chemo appointments.
The majority of the patients were wonderful, but on, that tiresome few! Depending on where you lived in my city you were scheduled an am or pm appointment to make it easier for our driver to pick up at certain times in certain areas. there was a fair amount of waiting around involved as all the patients had to be seen and treated before the bus could start dropping people off. Most of them were fine with this and understood the necessity.
We regularly had people who insisted on bringing on board several family members 'for company' and getting angry and 'that's not my problem' when gently informed that every extra person on board meant a patient couldn't be picked up and treated. The driver couldn't refuse to take these extras on board and although he tecnically wasn't supposed to he would end up making several extra trips to pick all the patients up.
My favourite was the lady (and I use the term loosely) who complained loudly that she had to share the bus with others, who claimed she had been told by me(absolutely not true) that she would be picked up by private taxi and the hospital would pay for it, and when it was explained to her that it was shared bus or nothing, yelled that if she had known it was going to be this much hassle she would have just let her hsuband or one of her 3 children drive her up and down every day like they had offered!
I informed her very civilly that each patient is asked if they have their own transport and if they require hospital assistance, and it is explained that each space taken in the bus is precious as we had so many patients. She replied that she saw no reason for her or her family to bear the cost of travel when 'we do it for free'. Umm, no we didn't. And every person who unnecessarily travels on the bus is taking a space that could be used for a genuinely deserving case.
One lady (nearly 70 yo)said she could make her own way here every day for her 30 day r/t treatment. Round about day 5 we discovered that she had been getting up at 6, walking a mile and then travelling about 2 hours by bus to get to us, and the same on the way back! And she started to cry when I told her I would have a bus at the door next morning to pick her up! I was nearly crying too! She made up for everyone else!
