We are waiting for a bus in Positano. We are an hour away from our hotel, with no other way of getting back.

We’ve been at this bus stop for a while. Namely, because the buses in Italy run on a very structured system known as the “We have no idea what the hell we’re doing” system.

This is a highly complex administrative system, with lots of moving parts. A system which might have originated here during Ancient Roman times. This particular bureaucratic system has influenced many classic modern managerial systems that are still in use today, such as the Customer Service System, the Commercial Airline System, and US Congress.

Allow me to explain:

Let’s say you want to take a bus somewhere in Italy. The first thing you would do under this system—and this is just common sense, really—is visit the cigarette shop.

Because that’s where you buy bus tickets in Italy. The tabaccheria. It’s not clear why you buy tickets at the local vape pen dispensary instead of, for example, the bus station. But that is the system. If you were to visit the bus station to purchase tickets, the attendants would just laugh at you until their noses bled.

No. You must go to the tabaccheria, which also sells lottery tickets and coloring books, and is a government authorized tax warehouse legally allowed to sell tobacco.

This is not a cheerful place to visit inasmuch as strict tobacco control laws dictate that all product packaging must be covered in 65 percent pictorial warnings.

These warnings are disturbingly graphic images intended to discourage smoking. Thus, all cartons are covered with morbid photos of people coughing up blood, dying infants, blackened lungs, patients attached to respirators, toothless mouths, and actual dead persons in caskets.

These packages sit directly behind your average Italian shop clerk, who stands before a giant wall of death imagery, smiling at you, ready to help you on your exciting journey into the Italian bus system.

You don’t speak Italian, so you begin by communicating in fluent hand gestures.

“Hi!” you say. “I’d like to buy a bus ticket!”

You say this while transforming your hand into a tiny municipal transit vehicle, making engine sounds with your mouth.

The clerk replies, “Bus ticket?”

So now you’re in business. At which point you tell the clerk where exactly you want to go—and you mispronounce the name of your destination city because we Americans have anglicized the names of all international cities.

For instance, Americans call Apulia, “Puglia,” and Firenze, “Florence,” and Roma, “That Place Where They Filmed ‘Gladiator.’”

Next, the clerk shows you a bus schedule. This is an extremely detailed list. There are hundreds of cities on the itinerary along with specific departure times.

It’s important to know how to interpret this complicated schedule. Here’s a crash course:

Let’s say your bus departure time is listed at 1:42 p.m. This means, under the current Italian system, that your bus will arrive at either 6:55 tonight, 11:09 tomorrow morning, or January 3 of the following year.

Buses are notoriously late under the Italian system. This is why you often see hordes of people waiting on street corners. Many look frazzled and exhausted. Some have been standing here since before your parents were born.

In the rare occurrence that your bus actually does arrive, congratulations you are witnessing a unique historical moment. But you must act fast, or you’ll miss your opportunity.

It will go like this: The bus will sail toward the curb, traveling upwards of 87 mph, taking out one fire hydrant, one lamppost, and four pedestrians. The vehicle doors will slide open briefly, and several passengers will fall out of the bus because the bus interior is packed tighter than the lower intestinal tract of a tick.

Next, the driver will shout, “Affrettarsi!” Which means, literally, “You have six seconds.”

At which point everyone frantically elbows and kicks their way toward the Bus Doors of Life, cramming their way onto a bus that is already so full its axles are bending.

Tragically, only a scant few people from this throng of frantic tourists will be successful at jamming themselves into the crowded bus. The remaining 144,000 will be left on the corner, with us, far from our hotels, until the next bus comes. Which is scheduled to arrive sometime after the next papal installation.

Oh, well. We’re going to keep positive and maintain a cheerful outlook. After all, it could be worse. At least it’s not raining.

I spoke too soon.