So....Christmas is terrible.....at least in terms of working. If it weren't for the Colonial being open, I may have lost money this weekend. I have never in my life seen so many people at the Colonial.
Another terrible thing about Christmas is that the people are all so very nice....and normal. At one point there were people waiting on cabs on the west side and a message got sent out from dispatch: 'Need cabs on the west side. It's Christmas. These are nice people'. Where's the excitement in that? The drunks that I did get in my cab were just sad and lonely. Interesting people were at a minimum.
Usually at the end of a night I know I'm not going to make much money. After 3 AM I have 2 hours left and there aren't many people who need cabs at that time. However, I stick around because there is potential. Picking up someone in a cab is like Russian Roulette. All I get is an address, but what will I find when I get there? The terrible customers are out there, and I'll get them every night, it's only a matter of time....but the good customers are always out there too. So even though I know I'm going to be sitting around in a parking lot for 2 hours, I stay out there because I enjoy the game of it all. I'll still get to meet 3-4 customers and one of them will usually be interesting. Interesting could be a bad thing, but interesting nonetheless.
With all my free time this weekend, I actually went out to talk to other drivers. The first time I did this was in a parking lot in Market Mall. I saw a taxi parked at the edge of the lot so I drove over to say hello. As I'm approaching I notice another person in the car. What's going on here? They're not near a door so he's not unloading a passenger. A friend maybe? I'm still driving a little closer and.....OH! Oh, I see. It appears that our friend the cabbie has found a non-monetary means to settle the fare with his customers. He didn't seem to like me driving by in the middle of it though. The expression I got....anger in its purest form.
The second, third, and fourth time I actually got to talk to the other driver. What I discovered in that these guys are as racist, if not more racist, than the customers I get who complain about how much they hate foreign taxi drivers and who love me for being white. Ya Racism!
Oh ya, the title. Well, it was only a matter of time before someone pulled a knife on me. The good thing was that she wasn't trying to rob me or threaten me. I got to the house and she came to apologize and say that she didn't actually need the cab anymore. Her boyfriend left and called her a cab, and then decided to come back and give her a ride. She pulled out the knife to express her anger and inform me of her plans to separate his testicles from his body by means of the knife. At this point, I rolled up the window a bit and informed her that she was holding a knife to a cabbie. She just stood there for a second. This second lasted a long time. At this point I was beginning to wonder why she pulled that knife out. Did she want to scare me a little bit to make me go away? It would not be unlike a cabbie to demand money from her for the inconvenience of driving to the house. Perhaps she suspected this and brought some back-up. Perhaps she had planned to rob me, but when she saw my sweet, innocent face she just couldn't go through with it. That's probably it. Actually, I've decided that that is now the undoubted truth of the situation. My good looks save me once again.
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