Cracking in the Sunshine
Dec. 19th, 2006 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringI cracked. It had been a thin afternoon for me and I was way outside my comfort zone. Normally I sit in my cab, master of my domain, confidently surfing the Mobile Display Terminal, bidding for work and getting passengers to their destinations efficiently. But not today.
This was one of those days. Hot, dry and enervating. And every job assigned to me turned up empty. I’d pull up at the hotel or office building, looking for my rush passenger to the airport or the juicy fare to a far suburb, and there would be nobody waiting. A look inside the foyer would show nobody looking for a cab, and where there was a receptionist to ask, I’d invariably be informed that, yes, there had been somebody, but they’d gotten in a taxi and gone.
The trouble is that on some days there are more passengers waiting for cabs than there are cabs to transport them. Canberra only has three hundred cabs, and in mid afternoon, their day drivers take most of them home, fill them up with gas, do their paperwork and hand over to the night drivers, who also have to do their start of shift activities. This takes time, and even for a small city like Canberra, it’s going to be at least half an hour before they can make it back into the central area from the suburbs with a new driver.
Of course this means that if there is a surge of bookings at this time, the passengers are left waiting for a cab. The radio bookings mount up and passengers stew out in the hot sun, checking their watches. It’s hard to blame them if they hail down an empty cab with a fresh driver cruising along looking for work, and harder to blame the cabbie when he decides to get the passenger to the airport before they miss their flight.
A standard occurrence is for a cab to pull up at a hotel or public service building, drop off a passenger, and then be besieged by passengers who made their bookings some time ago and can’t understand why a cab hasn’t been dispatched for them. Here’s a cab, here are passengers desperate to travel. It’s supply and demand.
Naturally the passenger isn’t going to get on his mobile phone and cancel the booking. He’d have to deal with the robot voice recognition system, and that’s more hassle than it’s worth. A dutiful cabbie will inform base on the radio that he’s picked up booking number such and such, but the temptation is to let it slide. For one thing, he’s now dealing with traffic, trying to shave a minute or two off the trip to the airport for the benefit of the anxious passenger in the back, and having to take his eyes off the road and his hand off the wheel to use the two-way radio system is a big ask.
On a normal day, I’m philosophical about such things, but on this particular afternoon, I’d been on the road for an hour and a half and not one of my jobs had resulted in a passenger. I was merely chasing down a string of old bookings, and I was getting bloody cranky.
My penultimate job was to an office building across from the Canberra Casino for a passenger going to the airport. The job was half an hour old at that stage. My spirits sank when I saw that one, because not only is there a stream of cabs going along that street, but there is a cab rank in front of the Casino. But I went to the building, found a parking spot, waited, checked inside the foyer, and when no passenger showed up, I listed the job as a “no-show”. My next booking was for exactly the same building, for another airport job, with the same time listed, and I began to see red at that stage. I knew that this job was as fruitless as the first, and I could see in my mind’s eye exactly what had happened: the two passengers had waited outside with their bags, checking their watches, and after a while, a cab would have pulled up at the rank, they would have suggested to each other that they share the ride to the airport, and they would have strolled over. Far better to get to the airport and down a quiet ale or two in the Qantas Club than wait in the hot sun for a radio booked cab.
So I was the bunny cleaning up the empty jobs while those unscrupulous cabbies who had picked up my passengers were happily stowing the money away.
I glanced across to the cab rank, and that’s when I cracked. There wasn’t a cab to be seen, but there was a private car parked on the rank, engine idling, the driver contentedly puffing on a cigarette.
I pulled up behind him on the rank, flashed my headlights at him, and when he didn’t react, I got out and scowled at him.
“You’re parked on a taxi rank,” I snapped.
“I’m just waiting for my wife,” he protested.
“Well, bloody go and wait somewhere else!” I all but shouted. Really, this was too much. I’d had no bloody fares all afternoon, I was hot and cranky, and here was this bludger parked on a cab rank.
He started up his car, drove off, and found a spot across the street, the same one where I’d been waiting for passengers that never showed up.
I moved up to the front of the rank and sat there fuming in righteous indignation. Private cars parking on taxi ranks can be a serious problem, especially during the evening outside restaurants and nightclubs.
I gradually calmed down and began to feel a little guilty. The poor bloke had been waiting for his wife, the cab rank was the only empty space around, and it wasn’t as if he’d parked and left his car unattended. Really I should have politely informed him that it was illegal for him to park there, and he shouldn’t do it again. There was simply no excuse for me to take out my bad temper on him.
I took out my water bottle, had a long swallow of the still cold water, relaxed in the airconditioning and listened to some soothing music. And before long, a passenger turned up, his luggage rolling along behind him, and opened the door.
“Mate, I’ve been waiting up at the casino hotel for half an hour. Can you take me to the airport?”
“Sure,” I beamed at him, “Hop in!”
This was one of those days. Hot, dry and enervating. And every job assigned to me turned up empty. I’d pull up at the hotel or office building, looking for my rush passenger to the airport or the juicy fare to a far suburb, and there would be nobody waiting. A look inside the foyer would show nobody looking for a cab, and where there was a receptionist to ask, I’d invariably be informed that, yes, there had been somebody, but they’d gotten in a taxi and gone.
The trouble is that on some days there are more passengers waiting for cabs than there are cabs to transport them. Canberra only has three hundred cabs, and in mid afternoon, their day drivers take most of them home, fill them up with gas, do their paperwork and hand over to the night drivers, who also have to do their start of shift activities. This takes time, and even for a small city like Canberra, it’s going to be at least half an hour before they can make it back into the central area from the suburbs with a new driver.
Of course this means that if there is a surge of bookings at this time, the passengers are left waiting for a cab. The radio bookings mount up and passengers stew out in the hot sun, checking their watches. It’s hard to blame them if they hail down an empty cab with a fresh driver cruising along looking for work, and harder to blame the cabbie when he decides to get the passenger to the airport before they miss their flight.
A standard occurrence is for a cab to pull up at a hotel or public service building, drop off a passenger, and then be besieged by passengers who made their bookings some time ago and can’t understand why a cab hasn’t been dispatched for them. Here’s a cab, here are passengers desperate to travel. It’s supply and demand.
Naturally the passenger isn’t going to get on his mobile phone and cancel the booking. He’d have to deal with the robot voice recognition system, and that’s more hassle than it’s worth. A dutiful cabbie will inform base on the radio that he’s picked up booking number such and such, but the temptation is to let it slide. For one thing, he’s now dealing with traffic, trying to shave a minute or two off the trip to the airport for the benefit of the anxious passenger in the back, and having to take his eyes off the road and his hand off the wheel to use the two-way radio system is a big ask.
On a normal day, I’m philosophical about such things, but on this particular afternoon, I’d been on the road for an hour and a half and not one of my jobs had resulted in a passenger. I was merely chasing down a string of old bookings, and I was getting bloody cranky.
My penultimate job was to an office building across from the Canberra Casino for a passenger going to the airport. The job was half an hour old at that stage. My spirits sank when I saw that one, because not only is there a stream of cabs going along that street, but there is a cab rank in front of the Casino. But I went to the building, found a parking spot, waited, checked inside the foyer, and when no passenger showed up, I listed the job as a “no-show”. My next booking was for exactly the same building, for another airport job, with the same time listed, and I began to see red at that stage. I knew that this job was as fruitless as the first, and I could see in my mind’s eye exactly what had happened: the two passengers had waited outside with their bags, checking their watches, and after a while, a cab would have pulled up at the rank, they would have suggested to each other that they share the ride to the airport, and they would have strolled over. Far better to get to the airport and down a quiet ale or two in the Qantas Club than wait in the hot sun for a radio booked cab.
So I was the bunny cleaning up the empty jobs while those unscrupulous cabbies who had picked up my passengers were happily stowing the money away.
I glanced across to the cab rank, and that’s when I cracked. There wasn’t a cab to be seen, but there was a private car parked on the rank, engine idling, the driver contentedly puffing on a cigarette.
I pulled up behind him on the rank, flashed my headlights at him, and when he didn’t react, I got out and scowled at him.
“You’re parked on a taxi rank,” I snapped.
“I’m just waiting for my wife,” he protested.
“Well, bloody go and wait somewhere else!” I all but shouted. Really, this was too much. I’d had no bloody fares all afternoon, I was hot and cranky, and here was this bludger parked on a cab rank.
He started up his car, drove off, and found a spot across the street, the same one where I’d been waiting for passengers that never showed up.
I moved up to the front of the rank and sat there fuming in righteous indignation. Private cars parking on taxi ranks can be a serious problem, especially during the evening outside restaurants and nightclubs.
I gradually calmed down and began to feel a little guilty. The poor bloke had been waiting for his wife, the cab rank was the only empty space around, and it wasn’t as if he’d parked and left his car unattended. Really I should have politely informed him that it was illegal for him to park there, and he shouldn’t do it again. There was simply no excuse for me to take out my bad temper on him.
I took out my water bottle, had a long swallow of the still cold water, relaxed in the airconditioning and listened to some soothing music. And before long, a passenger turned up, his luggage rolling along behind him, and opened the door.
“Mate, I’ve been waiting up at the casino hotel for half an hour. Can you take me to the airport?”
“Sure,” I beamed at him, “Hop in!”
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Well....
Date: 2006-12-20 07:30 am (UTC)(I used to have heated words to cabbies that would shoot infront of you into a busstop, and my Little old ladies would pick themselves off the floor (Hard to stop a bus and NOT hit a cab) and then have to helped to the curb. Rant off)
That being said, I am SURE you would NEVER do this. Have a better day tomorrow AND remember it is time to be happy :D
Re: Well....
Date: 2006-12-20 04:47 pm (UTC)