Broken down old hack
Nov. 16th, 2006 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringI've changed my tune with wrong numbers. We get one or two every day, usually for two businesses with numbers close to ours. "Hello, is that Bella's Hair and Beauty?"
Once upon a time I would have taken their booking and entertained myself until they hung up in outrage and dismay, "Sure I can do a bikini wax, quick, easy and painless. No wax. Just teeth. It's actually kind of fun. You'll enjoy it. I know I will."
But no more. Nowadays they get a groggy response, usually after the sounds of the phone being dropped and sworn at. "Hello, no this isn't Harry's Tire and Exhaust. It's Nightshift Pete's House of Broken Dreams."
Sleep management is something I'm beginning to attach a lot of importance to. I tell passengers that "yeah, I'm on until three in the morning," and they express appropriate admiration and/or horror, but in reality, I'll only drive that long if there are people needing to be gotten home and I feel alert enough to drive safely.
Last night was kind of slow. It had begun well enough, and as usual, once the jobs began flowing, they didn't stop for hours. Then I got a fare from Civic all the way down to Banks, which is pretty much where Canberra runs out in the far south. It's a good forty dollar plus fare, even at the day rate, which lasts until nine, when I switch the meter over onto the lucrative night rate and really clean up. But the problem with a fare way out to the extremities is that I'm unlikely to get one all the way back again, and instead I have to work my way in, with three-steps-forward-and-one-back little jobs of people going back home from the club.
Lovely weather for cabbies, incidentally. It got up to 11 degrees after a day in which we had rain, wind, hail and snow. Yes, snow in the middle of November. People have second thoughts about walking home in the balmy evening when it feels like the middle of winter and they aren't dressed for it. Instead they hail a cab.
I wasn't dressed for it either. The cabbie clothing company hasn't been making jackets since last winter and I figured that I could probably last until autumn in my long trousers and short-sleeved shirt. As a concession to the weather last night, I put on a fresh grey t-shirt underneath. I'd be in the heated cab all night, and I could stand the occasional foray outside to hoist a bag in and out of the boot.
So there I was, some time after midnight. I'd managed to get out of Tuggeranong and into Woden, but passengers had dried up and I'd spent half an hour or more working my way forward on the rank outside the big mall. Just after midnight one chap had come out of the mall and taken the first cab, putting me a the lead position, but nobody else had followed him, and I'd been pinning my hopes on the radio jobs. I'd gotten up to number one on the queue for radio work, and I was watching the Mobile Despatch Terminal keenly, hoping to snap up anything that came over in the adjoining areas.
I had the heater on fairly high, mainly to counter the airconditioner which i needed on to stop the interior of the cab fogging over. I'd turned off the engine in consideration of the cabbie behind me on the rank. I had the radio playing a golden oldies station, the parking lights on, the MDT, meter, roof light, EFTPOS, and voice radio systems all on, and I was feeling pleasantly warm and comfortable. One more job taking me over to the northside, where I could gas up and sign off. That's all I wanted. One more fare.
The illumination on the MDT dropped and I began fiddling with the controls, trying to up the brightness. Suddenly my cabin was full of little flashing lights, systems rebooting, squawks of radio, dimming lights. Uh-oh! Must be some electrical problem.
At this point I got offered a job. Or at least it was offered to me and then the MDT died and re-initialised itself, just long enough an interruption for the cab behind me to snap it up instead. And then, when I tried the ignition, the car wouldn't turn over. So there I was, alone on a midnight cab rank with a flat battery.
I turned off everything I could think of, including the heater, waited a few minutes in the hope that the battery would recover enough to kick over the engine. Nope. It was too far gone. I could ring the owner, get him out of bed with a set of jumper leads, but I still had one more trick up my sleeve before I had to do that. I'd seen broadcast messages go out for cabs to jump start their stranded brethren, and I reckoned that there was a good chance that I could snag a kindly and nearby cabbie.
At least the MDT had recovered enough, so I put in a request for a call to base. I can't call base directly over the two-way radio, you see - I need to use the terminal to log a request and when the radio operator has finished other tasks, he gets back to me. Usually I only have to wait a minute or so, except in cases of emergency.
I sat there, microphone in hand, waiting in the rapidly cooling cabin. Then a burst of static and the cheerful voice of the radio despatcher, "Go ahead, car 94."
I pressed the switch, began to talk, and the MDT flickered and rebooted. My transmission was cut off. I tried a few more times, but all I got was an increasingly testy operator. I couldn't get out my message.
Howver, I had my cellphone ready to hand, and at least it was fully charged. Only problem was getting through to base - the office hours number was no good at this time of night, and the only other number was the automated speech recognition system which 75% of my customers hate, taking out their frustration on me when they climb into the cab. It's not the best, I heartily agree, but then, I never had to use it. Now I had to find a way of navigating its robot responses and getting through to a human operator.
It has an odd voice, kind of gothic, resting on the blunt edge of uncaring and aggressive, which doesn't help people love it. It's famous for the voice recognition failing to make any meaningful connection with what has been said. You ask clearly and carefully to go to Parliament House, and it asks "You want to go to Bonython Crescent?" Trust me, I get all the horror stories. The passengers all agree it's not my fault, but still, the programmers who wrote the system aren't around to listen to their legitimate concerns, and I am.
Luckily, there's a way to get to a human operator (though this involves a lengthy wait at peak periods). You just say "Check" and as the system can't handle a request to check an existing booking, it drops you onto the operator queue. I fgured that at this hour of the morning, now getting onto one o'clock, I would be able to get through before my phone battery gave out.
And so it was. A cheerful voice answered, and I sobbed in relief. "Base, it's car 94 here, flat battery on the Woden rank. If you love me, send help!"
And they did. My MDT was stable enough now that I could see the broadcast message go out, and a little later, another saying that car 903 was on the way to rescue me.
he must have been on the far side of town, because it took him a good half hour to arrive, and in that time, I was shivering in my shirtsleeves. Boy was I glad to see him!
"The reason this cab has got jumper leads," he dolefully informed me, "is that I've been having battery trouble. Let's hope that when I connect to you, mine doesn't die as well."
He peered at me, my skin now as blue as my uniform. "Hey, how about this weather? Snow in the middle of November!"
We hooked up the leads, and i crawled back inside my ice-cold cab, turned the key and...
...nothing.
...nothing.
...nothing.
...a groan.
...a grinding noise.
...a groan.
...a chugga, chugga, chugga and then everything lit up.
...a cheer!
Drive 903 coiled up his cables and I approached him, beaming as brightly as my rooflight, thanking him for the rescue, and asking if maybe I could make a small donation to help with his time and expense.
"Five dollars will see me back on budget," he said.
"Here's ten," I said, "Buy yourself a nice hot coffee, will you?"
What a darling man. I'm going to be especially nice to Cab 903 in future. And carry a set of jumper leads so I can pay it forward.
He drove off into the mellow evening as the heater roared and life crept back into my extremities.
Another lesson learnt.
Once upon a time I would have taken their booking and entertained myself until they hung up in outrage and dismay, "Sure I can do a bikini wax, quick, easy and painless. No wax. Just teeth. It's actually kind of fun. You'll enjoy it. I know I will."
But no more. Nowadays they get a groggy response, usually after the sounds of the phone being dropped and sworn at. "Hello, no this isn't Harry's Tire and Exhaust. It's Nightshift Pete's House of Broken Dreams."
Sleep management is something I'm beginning to attach a lot of importance to. I tell passengers that "yeah, I'm on until three in the morning," and they express appropriate admiration and/or horror, but in reality, I'll only drive that long if there are people needing to be gotten home and I feel alert enough to drive safely.
Last night was kind of slow. It had begun well enough, and as usual, once the jobs began flowing, they didn't stop for hours. Then I got a fare from Civic all the way down to Banks, which is pretty much where Canberra runs out in the far south. It's a good forty dollar plus fare, even at the day rate, which lasts until nine, when I switch the meter over onto the lucrative night rate and really clean up. But the problem with a fare way out to the extremities is that I'm unlikely to get one all the way back again, and instead I have to work my way in, with three-steps-forward-and-one-back little jobs of people going back home from the club.
Lovely weather for cabbies, incidentally. It got up to 11 degrees after a day in which we had rain, wind, hail and snow. Yes, snow in the middle of November. People have second thoughts about walking home in the balmy evening when it feels like the middle of winter and they aren't dressed for it. Instead they hail a cab.
I wasn't dressed for it either. The cabbie clothing company hasn't been making jackets since last winter and I figured that I could probably last until autumn in my long trousers and short-sleeved shirt. As a concession to the weather last night, I put on a fresh grey t-shirt underneath. I'd be in the heated cab all night, and I could stand the occasional foray outside to hoist a bag in and out of the boot.
So there I was, some time after midnight. I'd managed to get out of Tuggeranong and into Woden, but passengers had dried up and I'd spent half an hour or more working my way forward on the rank outside the big mall. Just after midnight one chap had come out of the mall and taken the first cab, putting me a the lead position, but nobody else had followed him, and I'd been pinning my hopes on the radio jobs. I'd gotten up to number one on the queue for radio work, and I was watching the Mobile Despatch Terminal keenly, hoping to snap up anything that came over in the adjoining areas.
I had the heater on fairly high, mainly to counter the airconditioner which i needed on to stop the interior of the cab fogging over. I'd turned off the engine in consideration of the cabbie behind me on the rank. I had the radio playing a golden oldies station, the parking lights on, the MDT, meter, roof light, EFTPOS, and voice radio systems all on, and I was feeling pleasantly warm and comfortable. One more job taking me over to the northside, where I could gas up and sign off. That's all I wanted. One more fare.
The illumination on the MDT dropped and I began fiddling with the controls, trying to up the brightness. Suddenly my cabin was full of little flashing lights, systems rebooting, squawks of radio, dimming lights. Uh-oh! Must be some electrical problem.
At this point I got offered a job. Or at least it was offered to me and then the MDT died and re-initialised itself, just long enough an interruption for the cab behind me to snap it up instead. And then, when I tried the ignition, the car wouldn't turn over. So there I was, alone on a midnight cab rank with a flat battery.
I turned off everything I could think of, including the heater, waited a few minutes in the hope that the battery would recover enough to kick over the engine. Nope. It was too far gone. I could ring the owner, get him out of bed with a set of jumper leads, but I still had one more trick up my sleeve before I had to do that. I'd seen broadcast messages go out for cabs to jump start their stranded brethren, and I reckoned that there was a good chance that I could snag a kindly and nearby cabbie.
At least the MDT had recovered enough, so I put in a request for a call to base. I can't call base directly over the two-way radio, you see - I need to use the terminal to log a request and when the radio operator has finished other tasks, he gets back to me. Usually I only have to wait a minute or so, except in cases of emergency.
I sat there, microphone in hand, waiting in the rapidly cooling cabin. Then a burst of static and the cheerful voice of the radio despatcher, "Go ahead, car 94."
I pressed the switch, began to talk, and the MDT flickered and rebooted. My transmission was cut off. I tried a few more times, but all I got was an increasingly testy operator. I couldn't get out my message.
Howver, I had my cellphone ready to hand, and at least it was fully charged. Only problem was getting through to base - the office hours number was no good at this time of night, and the only other number was the automated speech recognition system which 75% of my customers hate, taking out their frustration on me when they climb into the cab. It's not the best, I heartily agree, but then, I never had to use it. Now I had to find a way of navigating its robot responses and getting through to a human operator.
It has an odd voice, kind of gothic, resting on the blunt edge of uncaring and aggressive, which doesn't help people love it. It's famous for the voice recognition failing to make any meaningful connection with what has been said. You ask clearly and carefully to go to Parliament House, and it asks "You want to go to Bonython Crescent?" Trust me, I get all the horror stories. The passengers all agree it's not my fault, but still, the programmers who wrote the system aren't around to listen to their legitimate concerns, and I am.
Luckily, there's a way to get to a human operator (though this involves a lengthy wait at peak periods). You just say "Check" and as the system can't handle a request to check an existing booking, it drops you onto the operator queue. I fgured that at this hour of the morning, now getting onto one o'clock, I would be able to get through before my phone battery gave out.
And so it was. A cheerful voice answered, and I sobbed in relief. "Base, it's car 94 here, flat battery on the Woden rank. If you love me, send help!"
And they did. My MDT was stable enough now that I could see the broadcast message go out, and a little later, another saying that car 903 was on the way to rescue me.
he must have been on the far side of town, because it took him a good half hour to arrive, and in that time, I was shivering in my shirtsleeves. Boy was I glad to see him!
"The reason this cab has got jumper leads," he dolefully informed me, "is that I've been having battery trouble. Let's hope that when I connect to you, mine doesn't die as well."
He peered at me, my skin now as blue as my uniform. "Hey, how about this weather? Snow in the middle of November!"
We hooked up the leads, and i crawled back inside my ice-cold cab, turned the key and...
...nothing.
...nothing.
...nothing.
...a groan.
...a grinding noise.
...a groan.
...a chugga, chugga, chugga and then everything lit up.
...a cheer!
Drive 903 coiled up his cables and I approached him, beaming as brightly as my rooflight, thanking him for the rescue, and asking if maybe I could make a small donation to help with his time and expense.
"Five dollars will see me back on budget," he said.
"Here's ten," I said, "Buy yourself a nice hot coffee, will you?"
What a darling man. I'm going to be especially nice to Cab 903 in future. And carry a set of jumper leads so I can pay it forward.
He drove off into the mellow evening as the heater roared and life crept back into my extremities.
Another lesson learnt.
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-16 04:57 am (UTC)It sounds like there is good fellowship amongst cabbies at your company so that is good. Sorry to hear that you are having similarly peculiar weather to us. It certainly isn't very seasonal.
Drive safely, won't you. Hugs