Strike a light
Jun. 15th, 2008 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringI’ve been driving a different car each night, as the owner tries to cope with the havoc I’ve wreaked upon his fleet, rearranging and relocating cars and drivers. Some of the cars have been very ordinary indeed, with missing bits and pieces, hand-scrawled instructions to drivers on how to lock the doors by holding the handle a certain way, credit card terminals that constantly reboot while a bemused passenger looks on. All a bit of an adventure, really, and I get a payoff late at night when I vacuum out each new car, raise the rear seat cushion and shine my little torch around underneath to find a few golden dollars of loose change.
I ran into another driver on the main rank, and he showed me a broken grille where he had had a minor bingle on a notorious roundabout a few hours previously. He’d immediately rung the owner, saying, “I know you’ve had a bad week, but...”
Anyway, I’m happy to drive, so long as the car works. I don’t need cruise control or a CD player or leather seats. Just a passenger to get from A to B and a smile at the end of it.
Last night’s car had a blown headlight bulb, which only became apparent after the evening closed in and I started noticing that it was getting awfully dim in front of the car. Not a real problem for driving in Canberra’s well-lit streets, but if I got a long fare to an outlying area and I needed every pixel of illumination to spot the kangaroos, it would be a strain. Also, if I got noticed by a police patrol, they could put me off the road until I got it fixed, maybe issue a defect advice.
I put off replacing the bulb until the passenger flow diminished and I could squeeze out a few minutes. I can go “on hold” on the despatch system for up to ten minutes, which lets me refuel or grab a cup of coffee without losing my place in the queue for radio work. Trouble is that in the past I’ve had to grapple with these fiddly light fittings, a torch in my teeth, scraping my knuckles in the confined space for twenty minutes or half an hour before getting the old bulb out and the new bulb in.
I hit the Braddon servo, gassed up and selected a new bulb when I paid for the gas. The owner gives us a card to pay for gas, but anything extra, like airfreshener, cleaning supplies, minor repairs, we have to pay up front and get reimbursed. I looked at my watch. Five minutes left on my hold time and counting down. Should I try now, or wait for a quieter period?
No time like the present. I raised the bonnet, felt around for the light socket, squeezed the plug loose, pulled off the rubber seal, undid the wire catch and slid out the old bulb. Reversed the process to fit the replacement. Turned on the lights to test, dropped the bonnet and drove off, punching the air inside my taxi and shouting out “Supercabbie!”. Total time for bulb change, one minute!
It was like my old days as a soldier, when I could strip and reassemble a machinegun in a matter of seconds, click, click, click, my hands a blur.
Back onto the main rank to wait for my next job. I jotted down the figures for the gas refuel, litres and dollars, and looked for the separate receipt to note down the price of the bulb against the owner’s costs.
Ooops. No receipt. In my haste I’d left it on the counter. Without documentation, I’d have to pay for the bulb out of my own pocket, and while it wasn’t expensive, it was worth about an hour’s work, given my pitiful rate of pay.
After my next passenger, not a long fare, I whipped back to the servo and asked the cashier if he still had my receipt. Turns out that this is not an uncommon request from forgetful cabbies, and he keeps all the leftover receipts in a box beside the till. I shouldn’t have been so anxious as I watched him riffle through the little squares of paper, but nobody likes working an hour for nothing.
And, as you can tell from the photograph at the top of the page, he found the receipt. So that was a minor victory.
And now, getting ready to drive my next shift, I wonder what car I’ll be in tonight, what bits will be missing, and what wealth I’ll find under the back seat.
I ran into another driver on the main rank, and he showed me a broken grille where he had had a minor bingle on a notorious roundabout a few hours previously. He’d immediately rung the owner, saying, “I know you’ve had a bad week, but...”
Anyway, I’m happy to drive, so long as the car works. I don’t need cruise control or a CD player or leather seats. Just a passenger to get from A to B and a smile at the end of it.
Last night’s car had a blown headlight bulb, which only became apparent after the evening closed in and I started noticing that it was getting awfully dim in front of the car. Not a real problem for driving in Canberra’s well-lit streets, but if I got a long fare to an outlying area and I needed every pixel of illumination to spot the kangaroos, it would be a strain. Also, if I got noticed by a police patrol, they could put me off the road until I got it fixed, maybe issue a defect advice.
I put off replacing the bulb until the passenger flow diminished and I could squeeze out a few minutes. I can go “on hold” on the despatch system for up to ten minutes, which lets me refuel or grab a cup of coffee without losing my place in the queue for radio work. Trouble is that in the past I’ve had to grapple with these fiddly light fittings, a torch in my teeth, scraping my knuckles in the confined space for twenty minutes or half an hour before getting the old bulb out and the new bulb in.
I hit the Braddon servo, gassed up and selected a new bulb when I paid for the gas. The owner gives us a card to pay for gas, but anything extra, like airfreshener, cleaning supplies, minor repairs, we have to pay up front and get reimbursed. I looked at my watch. Five minutes left on my hold time and counting down. Should I try now, or wait for a quieter period?
No time like the present. I raised the bonnet, felt around for the light socket, squeezed the plug loose, pulled off the rubber seal, undid the wire catch and slid out the old bulb. Reversed the process to fit the replacement. Turned on the lights to test, dropped the bonnet and drove off, punching the air inside my taxi and shouting out “Supercabbie!”. Total time for bulb change, one minute!
It was like my old days as a soldier, when I could strip and reassemble a machinegun in a matter of seconds, click, click, click, my hands a blur.
Back onto the main rank to wait for my next job. I jotted down the figures for the gas refuel, litres and dollars, and looked for the separate receipt to note down the price of the bulb against the owner’s costs.
Ooops. No receipt. In my haste I’d left it on the counter. Without documentation, I’d have to pay for the bulb out of my own pocket, and while it wasn’t expensive, it was worth about an hour’s work, given my pitiful rate of pay.
After my next passenger, not a long fare, I whipped back to the servo and asked the cashier if he still had my receipt. Turns out that this is not an uncommon request from forgetful cabbies, and he keeps all the leftover receipts in a box beside the till. I shouldn’t have been so anxious as I watched him riffle through the little squares of paper, but nobody likes working an hour for nothing.
And, as you can tell from the photograph at the top of the page, he found the receipt. So that was a minor victory.
And now, getting ready to drive my next shift, I wonder what car I’ll be in tonight, what bits will be missing, and what wealth I’ll find under the back seat.
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not another accident??
Date: 2008-06-15 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 06:44 am (UTC)