Specimen Reception

[skyring]

Specimen Reception
Originally uploaded by skyring.

The taxi school gave us a brief rundown, and there's a paragraph or two in the manual, but as yet I hadn't hit one of these things. I looked at my fare sitting on the seat beside me and wondered how I should come to have two within an hour of each other. My first two, as it happened. Oh well, you get to learn quick in this game!

My passenger was human, but not alive. Or probably not. Still warm, I guessed. I didn't want to investigate further. Just a brief glance to confirm that the paperwork was correct, and then we raced off to the hospital.

My first of these jobs had begun with my very first job of the day. I arrived at the day driver's place just after three, and by the time I'd checked out the car, inspected the fluid levels, given the inside a brief tidy, arranged all my bits and pieces (including RingBear, who sits on the right hand side of the dashboard and if he suddenly slides across to the other side, I know I'm taking the corners too fast), copied down the start time, odometer reading and meter total, it was 1520 before I signed on as open for business.

I glanced at the map on the MDT and spotted a job in an adjoining suburb. You can tell when there's one going, because the little symbol changes from the normal "-" to a "+". Quick as a flash I hit the "Accept" button, thinking that here was my first airport job of the day.

Thursday afternoons when Parliament rises for the weekend are usually a frenzy as all the staffers, lobbyists, media and hangers on leave Parliament House and head out to the airport to catch their flights home. I can just about set up a shuttle service from Parliament House to the airport and be assured of steady traffic from three till six.

But no, not this one. When the fare details came up, it wasn't a normal job. It came up as a "Fixed Price of $27.50" and I was given a passenger name, a pickup point of a primary school, and a destination address of an after school centre away across town. and a pickup time of 1500.

Gulp. That meant that a teacher and child had been standing outside the school waiting for a cab for twenty minutes already, and it would still take me five minutes to get there. No other cabbie had bid for this job in the past half hour.

I guess that the passenger was about ten years old, and looking mightily bored. His minder had relief in her eyes as she loaded him into the cab. I asked the boy if this was a regular thing, and he replied, "Every day."

I had the address there on the screen, but it wasn't one I was familiar with, and I wasn't sure that a ten year old boy was going to give me the most efficient route, so i plugged the destination into my NavMan and off we went.

As often happens, the GPS screen became a source of entertainment for my passenger, and you could almost hear the thought, "Geez, i gotta get one of those - taxidrivers must have such fun!"

At one stage the robot voice told me to "bear left", and I picked up RingBear from the dashboard and said, "Huh! They got it wrong, the bear's on the right!"

He didn't smile at my taxidriver joke. He probably hears the same lousy puns from his father, the same sort I inflict on my kids.

The Navman got us there safely and efficiently, and it turned out to be a childcare centre attached to a school. My young passenger said he usually just got out, but I wasn't going to let a minor out of my sight until I'd gotten him handed over to one of the responsible teenagers running the after school centre.

None of them knew anything about payment, so I assumed it was some sort of account job, and copied down as many details from the screen onto a "green slip" as possible. let the bureacrats and beancounters sort it out. I was sure that someone, somewhere had paid for the trip and that eventually half the money would hit me.

My problem now was that the system didn't even know I'd picked up the lad, let alone delivered him. Obviously if the fare was preset, there was no point turning on the meter, but that was how I indicated to the system that I had started and finished a job. I called up base, and they sorted it out. "Just for your information," the despatcher went on, "you press '7#' to load and unload the job."

I looked at my main screen. Hmmm. If i pressed '7' it was the key for an emergency call. This didn't sound right, but I guessed that if I entered '#' immediately afterwards, this took the curse off it.

A second problem was that I was now well outside the "sweet spot" for the afternoon rush. Where I was now was great for taking little old ladies and their shopping around the corner once every half hour, but not so hot for quick money-making high frequency dashes to the airport and back, with the staffers in the back either frenzied with anticipation of a leisurely drink or two in the Qantas Club if they were early, or frantic with worry that they would miss their flight if they were late.

Nevertheless, little old ladies are as entitled to prompt and efficient service as anyone else, probably more so, and I did three of these jobs before I was in a position to head back into the cabdriving frenzy around Parliament House.

I dropped my passengers at the airport; not parliamentary staffers, as it happened, but a couple of tourists who had been trundling around the tourist atractions in the Parliamentary Triangle, and cheerfully complained about their aching feet when they got into the cab.

On the way back from the airport, just before making the turn over Kings Avenue bridge to head back up to Capital Hill, I got another one of those Fixed Price Fares. This time it was to collect a specimen from the hospice on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin and deliver it to the Pathology department of the Canberra Hospital in Woden. "Payment at P/U", the job description added, and sure enough, when I entered the hospice reception area, I was given a voucher already filled out, along with a small styrofoam container with plastic bags and some papers inside. "It's just blood," said the young lady behind the counter, but I still held onto it with care, thinking that whichever unfortunate patient it belonged to was entirely deserving of respect, and a safe and speedy journey for their blood sample.

With some misgivings, I pressed '7#' on the MDT.

"You all right, taxi 94?" the response came back immediately.

Ooops! Obviously the system worked, but not as I imagined it. I stammered out that I had been told to punch the code, and I could imagine the giggle behind the smile in their voice when I was told that "the key thing is to have the job details up on your screen", when you press '7#'.

Yeah, well why hadn't they told me that in the first place?

Uneventful trip to the hospital, where the Pathology department was well signposted, albeit not well supplied with parking slots.

Thinking that it was a good opportunity to take a photograph, I pulled RingBear out of his dashboard seat, before securing the cab, gaining entry to the building (now locked after hours, and needing an intercom call to gain access) and depositing my package on the counter.

"Do you mind if I take a picture?" I asked, as the pretty young lady made to whip it away. It only took me a second to set up and frame my shot (as you may see from the actual photograph), and I waved away her book of vouchers. "No, I've already been paid for this one."

While it would have been nice to get paid twice over for the same job, I am sure that those same beancounters I relied upon to reimburse me for delivering a schoolboy to afterschool care, would have gotten right cranky if they thought I was getting more than I deserved.

I got myself and RingBear back into the elevator, thinking that yes, the system worked. The key point was to understand it, and I had a way to go in that regard, though I was learning every day. Every hour.

Comments

[whytraven.livejournal.com]

Hee! The bear looks like he's shoving backwards to deliver the heavy package.