Driving a cab probably doesn't strike you as
being the most difficult job in the world, and certainly not the most
interesting. Well, I drive a cab in a medium-sized town in the Pacific
Northwest, and in my experience, being a cabby is a carousel of surreal
comedy, harsh life lessons, and unwelcome nudity.
#5. Yes, People Have Weird Sex in My Cab
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One dark, rainy night (I'm not trying to be dramatic; this is
Washington State we're talking about), I got a pickup call for a bar
known for over-serving its customers, which is not that uncommon in this
town. I pulled up and found a spectacularly drunk couple making out.
After confirming that they were the folks I was there to chauffeur, I
managed to corral them into the car. A few minutes later, I arrived at
their address with the sounds of heavy petting coming from the back
seat. When I asked for the fare, the husband leaned forward, put his
hand on my arm, and said, "Hey man, do you wanna, like, go on break,
come upstairs, and let me watch you fuck my wife?" You may recognize
this as the type of question that immediately makes you start looking
around for hidden cameras.
Thinkstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images Then, when I asked about the tip, they giggled for five straight minutes.
After a stunned silence, I gave a fake laugh, hoping he would
understand this to mean, "No thank you, now we'll play this off as a
joke, and you may salvage what's left of your dignity." But he was still
looking at me, waiting for an answer. I had to think of an excuse with
Olympic speed, so I told him my wife (I'm not married) would kill me,
and besides, I had to go pick my (imaginary) kid up from the babysitter
(at 3 a.m., apparently). What the hell my wife was doing in this fiction
that prevented her from retrieving our hypothetical child is beyond me.
Thankfully, the guy didn't ask.
The point is, sex is a bigger part of taxi driving than you think.
I'm frequently asked to take someone to a "rub and tug" parlor, and I
can't count how many times a guy's had me drive him to a bikini barista
stand just so his wife won't see his car there.
One of the weirdest experiences I've had was with one couple that got
into my cab wearing trenchcoats and nothing else (as I would soon
learn). They told me to get on the highway "and just drive" while they
proceeded to do nature's work in the backseat. When they were done, they
thanked me, because I'd facilitated an experience they'd always wanted
to try.
I know people have their fetishes, but taxi cabs are apparently way
more erotic than I ever could have anticipated. I have seen lots of tits
(mostly aimed in my direction to get the fare forgiven, but sorry, I
can't pay my rent with boobs), tons of guys getting blown, and far more
handjobs than I care to remember. I've even had a few guys start jacking
off for no apparent reason, which I guess also qualifies as a handjob.
Taxi cabs are the bathhouses of the modern age. Either that, or I've
been vastly underestimating my own raw, sexual magnetism for my entire
life.
Jack Hollingsworth/Photodisc/Getty Images "I'm only crossing the street, but damn, look at his jawline."
#4. We're Regularly Complicit in Crimes
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Do you like drug dealers and prostitutes? Well too bad -- or good
news, I guess, depending on how you answered that question. You wind up
driving a lot of them around, is what I'm saying. Some of the best days
I've ever had financially have been when one of those fine servants of
the community was in the back seat.
"How do you know they're drug dealers?" you might be asking. Well,
I'll pick people up sometimes, and they'll tell me they need to make a
few stops on the way home to "drop off some presents" in the middle of
March. Unless they're really into celebrating St. Patrick's Day, or a
bunch of their friends all have the same birthday, this is suspicious.
Then, after walking into a house to drop off one of those alleged
presents, they'll come out counting money. Since I doubt anyone is
charging their loved ones for small bags of "rock candy," it doesn't
exactly take an astrophysicist to figure out what's going on.
Steve Mason/Photodisc/Getty Images "I had no idea delivering cookies to orphans paid so well."
Sometimes they don't even try to hide it. Once, a guy in the back
offered another passenger some cocaine, and when that passenger motioned
towards me with a "hey, remember that guy exists" look, the dealer said
something like, "Oh, don't worry about it, he's just a cab driver. He
won't call the cops." And I wouldn't, because what else could I do? Call the
cops on my meal ticket, and make a potentially crazy person swear a
blood vendetta against me?
Other times, I'll get a young woman in the back seat, and she'll have
me drive her to a motel -- where she'll ask me to wait outside, with
the meter running. Fifteen to twenty minutes later, she'll come out, and
it's off to another motel, apartment, or house. After an hour of this,
with her coming back out each time sweaty and disheveled (and, on more
than one occasion, with a condom stuck to her coat), I start feeling
like the most under-dressed pimp in history. At the end of the day, as
long as it doesn't seem like anyone's getting hurt, I'm happy to drive
anyone around as long as the meter's running.
Comstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images One day I might splurge for the pimp hat.
There are other odd jobs you find yourself doing that are more
aboveboard. I once transported a woman to the hospital after she had a
seizure, because she refused the ambulance ride (which would have been
several hundred dollars, as compared to 20 bucks or so for the cab).
When we got to the hospital, the woman told me that her husband was
overseas and she was scared to be alone. She asked, "Would you be
willing to leave the meter running and come in with me?" Needless to
say, this isn't normally part of my cab-driverly duties, but the ER
isn't exactly a comforting place, and she seemed a bit freaked out
already. So she left her credit card info with me, and we went inside,
and I spent the next three hours talking to her in the ER.
monkeybusinessimages/iStock/Getty Images "You know, strangely enough, I haven't seen Taxi Driver."
You didn't think that story was going to end with us having sex, right?
#3. We Can Charge People for Being an Asshole (and Sometimes, They Don't Mind)
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Some people have lots of pent-up anger, and feel like the best way to
vent all that frustration is to harass the nearest living thing. Look, I
get it. I'm in the service industry, where on the whole you get treated
more like a Roomba than a person, so I developed a thick skin after
only a few short weeks on the job. That said, there is a line
clearly demarking the limit of shit that your cab driver is willing to
take from you. But when you cross it, you won't necessarily get kicked
out onto the curb. We might just charge you for it.
Once, a "gentleman" hopped into my back seat, told me where he was
headed, and almost as soon as we got rolling, started with the insults.
"Hurry the fuck up!" he shouted. "You can't drive for shit!" At this
point I gave him a polite warning, but that only riled him up more, and
he asked me if I was "some fuckin' Jew," because that apparently had
something to do with our interaction.
Hemant Mehta/IndiaPicture/Getty Images "I'm not. But don't worry, all religions equally think you're an asshole. You've united us."
Now, the rates posted on the door say there is an additional $2.50
charge per passenger when more than two people get in, but the meter
can't count who's in the cab. It's up to the driver to hit the "extra
passenger" button -- or, as I sometimes call it, the "acting like an
asshole" button. I gave the guy his warning, but once the antisemitism
started, I pounded the "asshole" button like Matthew McConaughey playing
bongos in a hotel lobby. It's easier to avoid getting pissed or
offended when each slur makes you $2.50 richer. And he was throwing
every shitty racist thing in the book my way, even when it didn't make
any sense (for example, he called me a n****r, and I'm as white as a
snow storm). He went on and on, and I kept pressing that button each
time.
Aidon/Photodisc/Getty Images "No, please, I'd love to hear more about how single Muslim mothers are ruining America."
By the time we got to his trailer ten minutes later, he'd racked up
an extra $25 -- that's one hateful insult per minute. However, to my
honest amazement, he got out, handed over the full fare, plus the
additional $25 asshole charge ... and a $10 tip. Wait, had I
accidentally stumbled across a new fetish?
#2. Your Safety Comes out of My Paycheck
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It probably won't surprise you to hear that most new cabs are
actually used cars. The company simply paints them, installs the meter,
lights, and lettering, and then puts them out on the road for 24 hours a
day. But what might surprise you is that it's the driver's financial responsibility to make sure the cabs keep running,
because we're usually leasing our cabs from the company. Since our
profits are razor thin, your relative safety level in any given cab is
directly related to how much your driver likes eating ramen in an
unfurnished apartment.
The first cab I drove was a 2001 Crown Vic with over 500,000 miles on
it, which is kind of like putting a saddle on an old refrigerator. The
engine was tired, I could barely get up to highway speeds, and the
transmission was slipping. In another cab I drove, the power steering
box was all but falling apart, which resulted in loads of play in the
steering wheel -- turning a corner at anything more than 5-10 mph was a
hero's trial. Yet another car had brakes so worn out that the stopping
distance on a dry road was about half a block.
Morgan David de lossy/Hemera/Getty Images Don't even get me started on the issues this one had.
Most of these problems are easy enough to fix if you have the time,
but that's another problem: even if you have enough money to fix
whatever is wrong with your cab, you still can't really do anything
about it, since the owners don't want any cars off the road for more
than an hour or so. So to cut costs, you learn to fix the problems
yourself -- and to minimize down time, you learn to cut corners. I fixed
the brakes on my cab in about 15 minutes in a Walmart parking lot,
which isn't exactly the type of thing that's going to win you any safety
awards.
BartekSzewczyk/iStock/Getty Images And to think I was going to spit that gum out.
I'm not saying that every cab you've gotten into is a death trap; cab companies in bigger cities have their own service departments.
But if you're in a small town, it's possible that the only thing
between a safe ride home and spinning wildly through an intersection
like a roman candle glued to a hockey puck is how much time and money
your cab driver was willing to spend making sure the tires are bolted
on.
#1. It's Not Hard to Keep Taxi Drivers Happy
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Driving a cab can be a very stressful job. In fact, Business News Daily named it the #10 most stressful job in America, right up there with being policemen, firefighters, and soldiers. Just look at that movie Collateral.
Most of the stress comes from how we're treated by our passengers.
Not everyone talks to us like the angry turbo racist from earlier, but I
think a lot of people wind up offending their cab driver without even
realizing it. Sometimes we work 12-hour shifts and bring home $21 in
profit, so there are nights when we understandably have little patience
for any bullshit, no matter how marginal. Luckily, it's super easy to be nice to cab drivers. Here's a quick rundown on how to keep your driver from snapping and turning into The Bone Collector:
logoboom/iStock/Getty Images "Oh look, that detour is taking us to the old abandoned slaughterhouse."
For one thing, it's insanely important that you don't keep us
waiting after calling for a ride. We work our asses off to be on time to
pick passengers up, but I can't tell you how many times I've shown up
right on time and had to wait 15, 20, or 25 more minutes before the
passenger finally came outside. I'm not getting paid for any of that
time, and because I've been dispatched to collect that specific
passenger, there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. I just
have to sit there, wasting minutes that I could use earning money.
Keeping us waiting outside is every bit as infuriating as being made
late for work because you're on hold with Comcast, so give us a time
when you know you'll be ready to leave. Please.
Also, let me know if you feel like puking. I'm not gonna be offended
or laugh at you; I'll happily pull over and let you shout the contents
of your stomach out all over the side of the road. If you try to hold it
in and wind up puking in my car, it's going to suck for us both -- I
have to charge you a $200 sanitation fee (sucks for you), and then I have to clean it up (sucks for me), because I can't do my job with a cab reeking of salty cheese.
deeepblue/iStock/Getty Images I can at least clean the outside of the car by speeding through a rainstorm.
Something most people don't think about when they're calling a cab is
how far away the cab depot is from where they live. I often have to
drive 25 miles to some backwater town to pick up a passenger, and I'm
not getting paid for that part of the trip (even though I am
expected to pay for the gas it takes to get out there). Sometimes I
start my meter running on the way there. I'm not supposed to, but if I
don't, I'm basically running a charity. It may seem shifty, but I have
to pay rent.
This may seem obvious to some of you, but don't try to haggle over
the fare. Where I live, the cab drivers are mostly friendly with each
other, so while we're in between calls, we all tend to hang out in the
parking lot of a local restaurant. While we're all hanging out, someone
will occasionally come up between us and try to pull us into a bidding
war over the privilege of driving them around to get the cheapest ride
they can. Yeah, don't do that. All you're doing is making yourself into
that weird kid on the playground whom nobody wants to talk to. If you
really want some kind of break, simply act polite -- I've occasionally
given discounts to people who went out of their way to make the ride
pleasant. Don't count on every cab driver in the world to do that, but
hey, acting like a decent person doesn't cost you anything. Might as
well give it a shot.
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