Grude, sympathies. Its a shame you can’t ever simply say, “…well, I think that possibly half the office/bus might now…”
One thing that working at a call center taught me (that I didn’t get as a youngster), is that, regardless of how you’re feeling, acting like a bright sunny person regardless of how you feel, makes the whole interaction easier. I had a period where I was on the phones where I was going through a rough emotional time, but I knew if I could make the beginning of the call happy, I could coast through the actual stuff on auto-pilot, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about how I was feeling, because this was just another round of “let’s reset that router…”
Once you see it as not so much, “I’m presenting fake emotions!” (which is how lots of teens/ twenties see it), as “I’m psychologically manipulating this interaction to achieve the goal I desire” it because a lot easier.
The last three months have been hellish for me - I’m just getting life from all sides right now. But when I can go to the clinic to get my refill and can say, “Oh, I’m doing ok. It’s a lot, but I’ll get through,” I can get my meds and get back to actually taking care of it, instead of being wrapped up in a whole litany of “There’s X, there’s Y, and Q wasn’t doing what they should, and that form never got corrected, so…” When I was 20, I would have thought of this as faking - Life is shitty, don’t pretend it’s ok! But now, I just see it as a way to achieve my real goal (which, these days, is often getting in and out of an interaction with a minimum of annoyance)
Do people get chewed out anymore? In management, we had so many restrictions on how to address a problem that conversations were like “Tammy, while we sympathize with any personal issues you may be having, I’m afraid shooting your co-workers is frowned upon. I’m issuing you a verbal warning with a copy of our policy of workplace violence, and if it happens again I’ll have to write you up and send you home for the day. Oh, is that a gunpowder burn? Here’s a form for worker’s compensation - how lucky your shooting spree took place here at the office!”
You have my sympathy. And at some point in some professions it seems like the issue isn’t the job itself, its the supervisor/boss using his position to make your life a living hell. As unjust as these situations are, its really critical to remain calm, particularly if your boss is chewing you out for something rediculous like the scenario you describe.
At my job, if I had a passenger pull that, I would remain very calm. I would focus on breathing steady. Some employees have a hard time because they get so worked up by some rediculous situation they are in they start to stammer, get flushed, hands shake, voice raised, etc. I know these things can be hard to control for some people, which for me is why it helps for me to focus on just breathing steady. If I got called into the office by my manager supposedly chewing me out for not caving in to the passenger’s demands, I would calmly give my side of the story, reiterate our employee policy on ‘Insane Passenger Wants to Hijack The Bus’ and point out I did nothing wrong. We can review the CCTV footage and everything is recorded. If I kept my cool in the situation, all the manager is going to see is the passenger screaming at me and making a scene. What they WONT see is me arguing with the passenger, antagonizing them, raising my voice, or doing ANYTHING to escalate the situation.
Also, reading people’s gripes about customer service jobs, I hear a lot of ‘everybody’s mean to me!’ stories. Its not that I flat out don’t believe them, but seriously, hear people vent about customer service jobs and it sounds like they are the Cindarella to their manager’s Evil Stepmother. Nothing they do is Right. They’re miserable but stuck. Nobody gets treated as shitty as they do. Working in many jobs like this, I’ve come to observe that the people that get the most upset by customers/managers* also tend to get the most picked on. Conversely, the most confident employees never seem to actually get in trouble, even if they really are screwups. There’s a lot of variables, but I think being able to act calm, confident, and bluff when you need to goes a long way in getting both customers and managers off your back. 
Or intelligence at all. I have a co-worker who will be openly hostile to everyone if the slightest thing is wrong in his life, he has the sniffles, whatever. He will also passive aggressively do things wrong at work. And we know he’s doing things wrong, skipping steps deliberately, etc. because he’s done things correctly in the past. An example would be refusing to do paperwork that he’s supposed to do on a daily basis.
Not surprisingly things are a looking a little grim for him at work since his bosses are taking note of his attitude. Not smart at all for him to be putting his job in jeopardy, as he’s one of those people who openly whines about financial problems. Getting fired will obviously make that worse unless he moves on to some other place and the cycle occurs again (he’s an admitted job hopper).