On the phone

[skyring]

"Been waiting long?" I asked as the passengers let themselves into my cab. Usually I greet customers with a "Good afternoon!" ranging through to "Good morning!" as my shift progresses. All too often the response to the latter is "Is it morning already?" as the merry passenger comes to grips with the end of a pleasant night out.

But there was something different about this group of four. A family group, I assumed, when I saw them in the late afternoon sun outside West Block in the Parliamentary Triangle. Middle-aged parents and grown up children, having a holiday in Canberra, which made their location at one of the vintage remnants of working bureaucracy all the stranger. Usually I pick up tourists outside one of the tourist attractions. Old Parliament House, the National Library, or sometimes the National Gallery, which can lead on to a stimulating discussion about art.

But West Block remains working government offices, unchanged since the days when there were only three government buildings occupying the parliamentary precinct. It's a lovely old white building, paint over rendered red brick, dating from the days when architecture required craftsmanship rather than pressing buttons. I'd expect to pick up public servants from here, not family holidaymakers.

The fact that a young kangaroo had just hopped across the street in front of me only added to the charm of the setting. It's as if a white-tailed deer had darted across the Mall in Washington, and disappeared behind the Smithsonian Castle.

But charm and cheer had long since left this granite-faced quartet.

"Have we been waiting long?" asked the father, as he buckled himself in, before directing his angry gaze on me. "Only about two hours!"

Uh-oh. For me, it had been a couple of minutes. I'd driven into the zone and promptly been notified of a job, which of course I had immediately accepted. A matter of whizzing my cab around some of the grandly named streets and pulling up smartly in front of the building. I was appalled. Admittedly it was a glorious afternoon, but when you've been peering up and down the street for two hours, even the sunniest saint is entitled to become Mister Grumpy. Worse yet, according to the messages I'd seen on my MDT, they would have been watching a succession of cabs drive past to pick up other fares in the area. They had probably tried to flag one or two down.

One or two dozen, more like. It was now a quarter to six, the busiest period for taxis. Everyone wants to get home, or to the airport, or back to their hotel, and the priority and pending jobs on my display screen occupy several pages. The limited Canberra rush hour was now in full crawl, and I knew that certain main roads would be clogged, a circumstance which added to the problem, as cabs stuck in traffic couldn't respond to calls for work.

It wasn't just the fact that these folk had been waiting for two hours. They'd also had to deal with the phone booking system, a system so awful that the Territory Government is apparently considering legislation aimed at forcing the cab company to replace it. I cop a lot of complaints about it, and though it's really not my fault at all, I listen sympathetically and try to pitch the system as gradually improving. After all, I'm the immediate representative of the taxi company and part of my job is to "sell" future rides to the passengers. If they don't get a pleasant, safe, efficient and above all speedy ride to where they need to go, then the next time they need to go somewhere, they might consider alternative methods of transportation.

Like walking, which would have been a lot quicker for these people than waiting two hours. Two hours of hoping that one of the speeding taxis would slow for them, two hours of grappling with the robot voice on the phone, two hours of stewing in the sun...

I did my best to sooth them, but it was a task beyond me. They agreed that it wasn't my fault - and I certainly hadn't been stooging around sipping sherberts in some cabbies club - but still, there was a lot of frustration that had to be let out.

Their destination, gritted out between clenched teeth, was a garage in Braddon, across the lake and on the other side of Civic, where their car was being repaired. It was now just a few minutes before six, when the garage closed, and if we didn't get there on time...

My heart sank still further. By now we were on the north side of Commonwealth Avenue bridge, and ahead of us lay several blocks of city gridlock before I could take a side street. Maybe I'd get a good run through the lights...

I rounded City Hill and Northbourne Avenue stretched out ahead of us, a sea of red lights and solid traffic.

"Look," I said, in surrender. "We're stuck in traffic that wasn't here two hours ago, the fare on the meter reads $10.50, but your fare will be $10, regardless of what the meter says when we arrive."

It was the least I could do. I got a grunt in acknowledgement, but I felt I had acted to spare an escalation in tension. At least while we were inching our way forward over the next few minutes, the passengers wouldn't be feeling every beat of the meter reaching further into their pockets. Instead it was reaching towards my pocket, but so long as the total fare didn't rise over twenty dollars, I wouldn't actually be losing anything but time.

I think i had won some sort of grudging acceptance by the time I delivered my passengers to their destination, a few minutes before six and just in time to collect their freshly repaired car. However, I doubt that they'll be taking too many taxis in future, nor recommending the taxi company to their friends.

No matter how much of a discount I give the passenger for avoidable delays, nor how much of a sympathetic ear I lend to them, I still can't fix the major problem affecting Canberra's cabs at the moment, and that is the undeniable fact that the robot voice recognition system is failing to give a considerable number of taxi customers the quick, comfortable and efficient transport experience they feel entitled to. I really hate it when I hear of passengers having to wait long times for taxis, or missing flights or important meetings because a cab didn't turn up at the correct time.

I know that the taxi company is feeling the heat just as much as I am, and at a slightly higher level when the booking system is a matter for legislature debate, but still, it's something that is causing problems.

I won't say I had a totally bad shift, because most of my passengers were cheerful company, and I was able to get them to their destinations efficiently, and in one or two cases I managed to exceed their expectations, but enough of my passengers had delays long enough that they were righteously indignant, and that affected my overall mood for the night.

And to top it all off, one of my passengers cheerfully walked away with my brand new mobile phone. I immediately found a pay phone and dialled the number, but my phone had been turned off, which led me to conclude that this wasn't a case of a passenger mistakenly picking up the wrong phone, but rather one of deliberate theft, as I had made sure that my phone was fully charged and receiving calls prior to commencing my shift.

***SIGH***

Comments

[drusillamac.livejournal.com]

Well, if you were a cabbie here in the states, specifically UCLA, you could always taser the thief multiple times

Yep, I've seen that video. Pretty nasty stuff...