Luck or Loss?

[skyring]

I found a couple of "scratchie" lottery tickets in my cab the other day. They must have fallen out of a passenger's wallet or pocket. I'll have to hand them in, of course, but I must admit that I toyed with the idea of ringing up the base and saying, "He wouldn't want them back anyway - neither of them was a winner."

Coins are fair game. Occasionally I'll spot a dropped dollar coin on the floor and scoop that up. Under the back seat is also a good spot, and now and then I'll lift up the back seat cushion, shine a torch around underneath for that curved gleam of metal. Passengers might be giving me money all day long, but nothing beats a freebie 20 cent piece!

Passengers leave things in the cab all the time. Usually little bits of rubbish, such as an EasyCab ticket scrumpled up and pushed under a seat. I tidy them up whenever I have enough leaisure to check over the cab, which I do from time to time, shaking out the mats and maybe giving the windows a quick spray and wipe.

I've had one person leave a mobile phone in the back seat. My next passenger, on a quick trip to the airport, handed it to me, about the same time as the owner discovered his loss and rang his own phone. It began buzzing and I looked at it in horror. The last thing I wanted to do was to wrestle with a strange phone and set of buttons (and this one had a lot more buttons than most) while negotiating the series of roundabouts that punctuate the drive to the airport.

Shortly afterwards, base got onto me and asked if I had a mobile phone left behind in my cab. I replied that I did, and would be returning it to the hotel as soon as possible. Luckily it was a fairly slow day, and I got it back to the owner within a few minutes, but if the action had been heavy, I might have either had to wait several hours until I was in the area again, or wave off some passengers so as to make a special trip to drop it off.

Someone left a hat in the cab once. The day driver had obviously taken a schoolchild somewhere, because there was a widebrimmed floppy hat in the back seat when I turned up for my shift. Luckily it had a name inside and a school logo outside, so when I got a chance I dropped it off at the school office, and doubtless it found its way back home.

So far I haven't actually driven off with somebody's groceries or luggage in the boot, though I must admit that I've come close a couple of times during the frenzied action at airport rush hours. But I can just imagine the frantic phone call to the taxi base and the stern broadcast message coming over the MDT, requiring me to immediately return to the airport and hand over the luggage to the distraught passenger. I think I'd feel honour bound to return their fare as well, in compensation for the trauma caused. The thought

I also keep my own little bag in the boot. It's my small carryon bag, and it is just the right size for all the paraphenalia I need for my shift. Water bottle, GPS receiver, polishing cloths, camera, Ringbear, muesli bar, cabbie handbook... I slot all this stuff into the various cubby holes in my tiny office, and stow the empty bag in the boot. It has a Qantas Frequent Flyer luggage tag with my name on it, but even so, I use a little yellow TSA padlock to secure it inside, just in case it gets hauled out by mistake at the airport while one of the passengers is paying the fare and the rest are unloading the boot.

I usually make a quick scan of the passenger seats when dropping off a fare. I know that mistakes happen, things get overlooked, when habits are broken and people do things that are out of the ordinary, such as catching a cab when their car has broken down, or if they have missed the last bus. While they are counting out the money, and doubtless reflecting on how expensive taxis are nowadays, they can get distracted.

Sometimes I've been able to find things in this scan and give them back to the passenger. That's always worth a smile, and we each go on our way rejoicing. Sometimes I'll ask the passengers to take a look as they are getting out.

Then again, there was the customer who was physically incapacitated, and when her hand trembled as I gave her the change for the fare, she dropped a two dollar coin. It vanished under the front seat, and as I clicked another one out from my coin holder, I said, "Don't worry, I'll pick that up later when I finish my shift."

A few customers more in the cab, and I said to one of them, quite in his cups and looking like exactly the sort to lose his cellphone, if not his dinner, "Just check to make sure you haven't left anything behind, will you?"

He paused at the door and looked back inside. I saw his eyes gleam and he bent down and retreived something from the floor. I smiled at him until he straightened up, happily showing me a two dollar coin. "Musta dropped this." he said.

Oh well, it was worth it to see him grinning, his evening made golden.

I'll drop those scratchie tickets off at the cab base in a little while. Unlikely that anyone will claim them, but if I took the attitude that nobody was going to claim them, scratched them to find that they had won ten thousand dollars, geez, but I'd feel awful!

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