"Everybody was a bit surprised, and I knew I needed to ring police, but the passengers said, 'I'm going to be late'. Calling would have stopped everything for a while, so instead I carried on."
Davis said in 30 years of driving buses, he had never been robbed.
"Your mind just goes blank, but you trust your instincts and the passengers became my main concern."
He drove another kilometre to the final Westgate stop and back to the station before he made the call to police- almost 25 minutes after the cash had been snatched.
"It was tidy sum of $31, too … He obviously wanted the money more than he thought the bus company did," Davis joked.
The thief had tagged on at Henderson Train Station, so Davis hoped he could be tracked down that way.
He said his passengers' reaction to the incident didn't upset him, but being robbed did make him "think a lot of things, like is it worth going on with this kind of job?"
The Te Atatu North resident said he'd take a bit of time off to re-evaluate things, but he felt he had to keep moving.
Police confirmed they received a complaint relating to the theft of a small quantity of money which took place 8.30am.
