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The three questions
Jun. 10th, 2008 02:20 pmA Danish taxidriver once told me of the three questions he asks to himself of his night passengers.
Is he going to pay me?
Is he going to pull out a knife and attack me?
Is he going to throw up in my cab?
People tend to assume that these things happen to cabbies on a regular basis, and each shift is a nightmare ride, dodging the dark deeds of drunks, Robert de Niro cleaning bodily fluids from the back of his cab, lurid newspaper headlines.
But most passengers are very good. In eighteen months of driving, I’ve had two people throwing up in my cab, two deliberate fare evasions, and no violent incidents.
That changed last night.
It began with a typical pickup from the Alinga rank. A busy night and few cabs - taxidriver heaven. It also meant that I could pick my fares, avoiding high risk areas, people far gone drunk, people with hamburgers etc. Mind, at two in the morning, most of the work is ferrying home people too drunk to drive, so there’s a limit to the level of choice available.
My strategy on the main city rank after midnight is to engage the central locking and ignore all hails until I get to the head of the queue. The idea is to reward the passengers who are obeying the rules, rather than those who are more selfish, those who try to shortcut the system by flagging down cabs as they approach the line. I reckon that people who follow the rules are more likely to be considerate of the needs of a night cabbie, and less likely to score a “Yes” answer on the three questions.
Somewhere around two in the morning. Two girls and two guys. A typical group, and I couldn’t see any trouble out of them. I had my Abba video playing on the iPhone, and with any luck the girls would start singing along. For guys, I’ll put on Dire Straits, and it’s just amazing how good my passengers can be on the air guitar. Sitting down, not much room, seatbelt on, but still they become Mark Knopfler for a few happy minutes. I love it.
“Where are we going?” I asked. They named a suburb in Woden Valley and I swung the cab around. Most people would turn left onto Northbourne Avenue at the lights immediately in front, and then go through the lights at the London Circuit intersection, and the guy in the front seat yelped in surprise.
“We miss the lights, this way,” I explained as we moved slowly down East Row, random drunks crossing the street without looking. There’s a right turn onto London, and then we get a slip lane for the left turn to head south, so we can save a few minutes there. Most passengers appreciate it if we avoid red lights - and the meter ticking over while we wait for the green.
The two girls and guy in the back were chatting amongst themselves, but the bloke beside me wanted to engage the taxidriver.
“What’s your name, taxidriver?” he asked.
“TD,” I replied. Most people work it out after a few seconds, but this guy spent the rest of the ride trying out increasingly bizarre names with those initials. His suggestion of “Tiny Dick” was good, and I dutifully laughed, but I’d heard it before.
Something about his attitude was wrong. It was as if he was trying to prove something. He wanted to demonstrate his superiority over a taxidriver, I guess. Rather pointless. You get a young Asian driver on the nightshift, he could well be a doctor fresh off the plane, earning a modest crust while waiting for his paperwork to clear. An older guy might be an owner-operator worth a million dollars or two, given the value of taxi licences these days.
Then again, there’s my old day driver Leo, living in a government flat, looking after his elderly parents and forever short of a buck. A good shift and he can pay off some debt, a bad day and he’s scrabbling to find money to fill the tank. Frayed shirt and straggly beard, he’ll never make the A-list, but he has a heart and spirit that I love.
If some high school punk wants to sneer at a taxidriver to impress his girlfriend, that’s his business.
Me, I do this for fun. The money pays for holidays overseas, I chat with the passengers and I get to drive around a beautiful city. All the places I’ve seen, Canberra is still my favorite city in all the world. And I feel I’m doing something useful, getting people home. “Everyone’s entitled to a few drinks with their friends,” I tell my sozzled passengers, “and let’s face it, how else can you get home?”
The buses stop running after midnight, Canberra is far too spread out for all but a few to walk or cycle, and if all the drunks drove home, some of them wouldn’t make it. We cabbies might only be little cogs in the machinery of society, but in our own way we help keep things running smoothly.
I was directed into a pleasant suburban street. “Up there, where those shiny cars are parked.”
The girls got out and seemed to melt away into the wall. They had offered to pay, but the gentlemen had brushed away their money.
“Where now?”
I was directed a few streets away and down a cul-de-sac. With one eye on the GPS map, this looked fishy. Most people know the exact best way to get home, but I’d been directed around three sides of a square. Even slow drunken wits are usually sure on the turns and street names needed to tell a cabbie where to go.
I stopped the meter. “That’s twenty-seven eighty, thanks.”
The chap in the back seat got out, and the guy in front opened his door and stood up. Sometimes my stouter passengers do this so they can get their wallets out.
“You do credit?” he asked, and I got out the credit card terminal. Instead of handing me a card, he walked around to my side. I wound down the window. I was thoroughly suspicious by now, but the infra-red security camera above my door was taking in every detail. And of course, the interior cameras had recorded everything during the trip.
He and his mate were standing together by my door. “Bail!” the first guy shouted. “Sick!” his friend responded, and they were off, scuttling together across the parkland at the end of the street.
I’ll never chase a runner. I might catch them.
Besides, the time and trouble it would take, especially if the police got involved, would be a dead loss. Far better to get back on the road, finding fresh passengers and earning money, than to stuff about making statements in police stations.
I generally don’t worry too much if a passenger can’t pay. Sometimes they have spent all their cash and the bank card is declined. Sometimes they tell me, “Just drop me off when the meter hits ten dollars.”
If they are genuinely short, I don’t mind. I have to pay the owner half the cost of the metered fare, and a big chunk of what’s left over goes in tax, so it’s money straight out of my pocket, but then again, I generally score enough in tips from happy passengers to cover an act of charity.
I’m certainly not going to leave people stranded by the side of the road, so I’ll drive on past the ten dollars, just for the pleasure of seeing them home safely with a smile. Or I’ll wave away the apologies of an embarrassed passenger whose card has come back “Declined”.
“Just do something nice for someone else when you get a chance,” I tell them, and I’ll drive away, loaded down with good karma.
But I don’t like being taken advantage of. This looked like a practised act to my eyes, and doubtless a previous cabbie or two had been left fuming and cursing in that cul de sac while the young scoundrels ran off into the darkness where they knew every tree, every path, every laneway.
But they’d made a mistake tonight. Maybe they thought I wouldn’t remember where I’d dropped the girls off, but cabbies have a prodigious memory for places and streets and landmarks. I went back to the house with the shiny cars parked outside, wrote out a note and popped it into the letterbox. Pulled out my Day-Timer and made a record of the address and other details.
The next day, I played internet detective. It’s amazing what comes up with a bit of googling. I found a government database, checked a real-estate site, and looked at the phone book. I had a name and address, but on examining the online map, I began to wonder if I’d been quite so clever.
There was a laneway running down beside the house where the girls had been delivered. I wasn’t sure that I’d actually seen them go inside. Perhaps they had been in on the polished scam as well? Walked off down the lane, across the park, and into the flats. It would make sense to drop the girls off first if you were planning a runner. In tight skirts and high heels, they’d be a liability in a pursuit over parkland.
Maybe the residents of the house where I’d left my note were totally innocent. Maybe they were fed up with angry cabbies harassing them at all hours. Maybe I’d been outsmarted by a bunch of young ratbags.
But I didn’t think so. The girls had seemed genuine enough. Happy after a night out, they hadn’t really joined in baiting me during the ride. No sneers in their voices. And they’d offered to pay for their share of the trip.
One way to check. I rang the number and introduced myself as the cabbie who had left the note. The person who answered reassured me that yes, their daughter was one of the girls, they knew the boys, and I’d be paid.
So that was that. My score is now three runners in eighteen months.
No photograph for this entry. I could always put up a still from the security camera footage, I guess, but even thieves are entitled to privacy in today’s world.
I just hope this particular ratbag learns a lesson. Be nice to people who are nice to you. How hard is that?
http://www.skyring.com.au
Is he going to pay me?
Is he going to pull out a knife and attack me?
Is he going to throw up in my cab?
People tend to assume that these things happen to cabbies on a regular basis, and each shift is a nightmare ride, dodging the dark deeds of drunks, Robert de Niro cleaning bodily fluids from the back of his cab, lurid newspaper headlines.
But most passengers are very good. In eighteen months of driving, I’ve had two people throwing up in my cab, two deliberate fare evasions, and no violent incidents.
That changed last night.
It began with a typical pickup from the Alinga rank. A busy night and few cabs - taxidriver heaven. It also meant that I could pick my fares, avoiding high risk areas, people far gone drunk, people with hamburgers etc. Mind, at two in the morning, most of the work is ferrying home people too drunk to drive, so there’s a limit to the level of choice available.
My strategy on the main city rank after midnight is to engage the central locking and ignore all hails until I get to the head of the queue. The idea is to reward the passengers who are obeying the rules, rather than those who are more selfish, those who try to shortcut the system by flagging down cabs as they approach the line. I reckon that people who follow the rules are more likely to be considerate of the needs of a night cabbie, and less likely to score a “Yes” answer on the three questions.
Somewhere around two in the morning. Two girls and two guys. A typical group, and I couldn’t see any trouble out of them. I had my Abba video playing on the iPhone, and with any luck the girls would start singing along. For guys, I’ll put on Dire Straits, and it’s just amazing how good my passengers can be on the air guitar. Sitting down, not much room, seatbelt on, but still they become Mark Knopfler for a few happy minutes. I love it.
“Where are we going?” I asked. They named a suburb in Woden Valley and I swung the cab around. Most people would turn left onto Northbourne Avenue at the lights immediately in front, and then go through the lights at the London Circuit intersection, and the guy in the front seat yelped in surprise.
“We miss the lights, this way,” I explained as we moved slowly down East Row, random drunks crossing the street without looking. There’s a right turn onto London, and then we get a slip lane for the left turn to head south, so we can save a few minutes there. Most passengers appreciate it if we avoid red lights - and the meter ticking over while we wait for the green.
The two girls and guy in the back were chatting amongst themselves, but the bloke beside me wanted to engage the taxidriver.
“What’s your name, taxidriver?” he asked.
“TD,” I replied. Most people work it out after a few seconds, but this guy spent the rest of the ride trying out increasingly bizarre names with those initials. His suggestion of “Tiny Dick” was good, and I dutifully laughed, but I’d heard it before.
Something about his attitude was wrong. It was as if he was trying to prove something. He wanted to demonstrate his superiority over a taxidriver, I guess. Rather pointless. You get a young Asian driver on the nightshift, he could well be a doctor fresh off the plane, earning a modest crust while waiting for his paperwork to clear. An older guy might be an owner-operator worth a million dollars or two, given the value of taxi licences these days.
Then again, there’s my old day driver Leo, living in a government flat, looking after his elderly parents and forever short of a buck. A good shift and he can pay off some debt, a bad day and he’s scrabbling to find money to fill the tank. Frayed shirt and straggly beard, he’ll never make the A-list, but he has a heart and spirit that I love.
If some high school punk wants to sneer at a taxidriver to impress his girlfriend, that’s his business.
Me, I do this for fun. The money pays for holidays overseas, I chat with the passengers and I get to drive around a beautiful city. All the places I’ve seen, Canberra is still my favorite city in all the world. And I feel I’m doing something useful, getting people home. “Everyone’s entitled to a few drinks with their friends,” I tell my sozzled passengers, “and let’s face it, how else can you get home?”
The buses stop running after midnight, Canberra is far too spread out for all but a few to walk or cycle, and if all the drunks drove home, some of them wouldn’t make it. We cabbies might only be little cogs in the machinery of society, but in our own way we help keep things running smoothly.
I was directed into a pleasant suburban street. “Up there, where those shiny cars are parked.”
The girls got out and seemed to melt away into the wall. They had offered to pay, but the gentlemen had brushed away their money.
“Where now?”
I was directed a few streets away and down a cul-de-sac. With one eye on the GPS map, this looked fishy. Most people know the exact best way to get home, but I’d been directed around three sides of a square. Even slow drunken wits are usually sure on the turns and street names needed to tell a cabbie where to go.
I stopped the meter. “That’s twenty-seven eighty, thanks.”
The chap in the back seat got out, and the guy in front opened his door and stood up. Sometimes my stouter passengers do this so they can get their wallets out.
“You do credit?” he asked, and I got out the credit card terminal. Instead of handing me a card, he walked around to my side. I wound down the window. I was thoroughly suspicious by now, but the infra-red security camera above my door was taking in every detail. And of course, the interior cameras had recorded everything during the trip.
He and his mate were standing together by my door. “Bail!” the first guy shouted. “Sick!” his friend responded, and they were off, scuttling together across the parkland at the end of the street.
I’ll never chase a runner. I might catch them.
Besides, the time and trouble it would take, especially if the police got involved, would be a dead loss. Far better to get back on the road, finding fresh passengers and earning money, than to stuff about making statements in police stations.
I generally don’t worry too much if a passenger can’t pay. Sometimes they have spent all their cash and the bank card is declined. Sometimes they tell me, “Just drop me off when the meter hits ten dollars.”
If they are genuinely short, I don’t mind. I have to pay the owner half the cost of the metered fare, and a big chunk of what’s left over goes in tax, so it’s money straight out of my pocket, but then again, I generally score enough in tips from happy passengers to cover an act of charity.
I’m certainly not going to leave people stranded by the side of the road, so I’ll drive on past the ten dollars, just for the pleasure of seeing them home safely with a smile. Or I’ll wave away the apologies of an embarrassed passenger whose card has come back “Declined”.
“Just do something nice for someone else when you get a chance,” I tell them, and I’ll drive away, loaded down with good karma.
But I don’t like being taken advantage of. This looked like a practised act to my eyes, and doubtless a previous cabbie or two had been left fuming and cursing in that cul de sac while the young scoundrels ran off into the darkness where they knew every tree, every path, every laneway.
But they’d made a mistake tonight. Maybe they thought I wouldn’t remember where I’d dropped the girls off, but cabbies have a prodigious memory for places and streets and landmarks. I went back to the house with the shiny cars parked outside, wrote out a note and popped it into the letterbox. Pulled out my Day-Timer and made a record of the address and other details.
The next day, I played internet detective. It’s amazing what comes up with a bit of googling. I found a government database, checked a real-estate site, and looked at the phone book. I had a name and address, but on examining the online map, I began to wonder if I’d been quite so clever.
There was a laneway running down beside the house where the girls had been delivered. I wasn’t sure that I’d actually seen them go inside. Perhaps they had been in on the polished scam as well? Walked off down the lane, across the park, and into the flats. It would make sense to drop the girls off first if you were planning a runner. In tight skirts and high heels, they’d be a liability in a pursuit over parkland.
Maybe the residents of the house where I’d left my note were totally innocent. Maybe they were fed up with angry cabbies harassing them at all hours. Maybe I’d been outsmarted by a bunch of young ratbags.
But I didn’t think so. The girls had seemed genuine enough. Happy after a night out, they hadn’t really joined in baiting me during the ride. No sneers in their voices. And they’d offered to pay for their share of the trip.
One way to check. I rang the number and introduced myself as the cabbie who had left the note. The person who answered reassured me that yes, their daughter was one of the girls, they knew the boys, and I’d be paid.
So that was that. My score is now three runners in eighteen months.
No photograph for this entry. I could always put up a still from the security camera footage, I guess, but even thieves are entitled to privacy in today’s world.
I just hope this particular ratbag learns a lesson. Be nice to people who are nice to you. How hard is that?
http://www.skyring.com.au
