Soul's Daily Cab Log

[SoulDischarge]

It's been a long time coming, but I've been too lazy to start doing this up til now, partially because the day to day life of driving a cab isn't all that wacky. For every memorable character, there's 20 little old ladies coming home from the grocery store. I'll just post a list of trips I get for each day worked with a brief description of the trip/person. Most of these will be unremarkable, but weirdos will get more text. Until I get bored of doing this.

[SoulDischarge]

Sun 2/12/12
On the road: 4:40pm
Off the road: 3:50am

Since I'm fairly reliable and actually run a lot of trips (a lot of experienced cabbies don't rely on dispatch or refuse to go out of their way to pick up passengers, which drives the dispatchers literally insane), I've gotten the privilege of being scheduled on a cab, which means one of the less shitty cabs is available for every day at the same time unless I call in and say I'm not coming in. Today, my scheduled cab was given to someone else, even though I wasn't all that late showing up (well relatively; I was about an hour and a half late from when I'm scheduled, but they usually don't put it on the road for like 3 hours of me not showing up).

1. Male, 20s, black. McDonalds to a tower project.
2. Cancel when I show up.
3. Female, 30s, black, 2 kids. Drugstore to home.
4. Male, late 30s/early 40s, white. Was kind of slow, so I went 15 minutes out of my way to pick this guy up since he's supposedly a regular and lives in the wealthy part of town. Goes to the bar. He ends up being kind of a condescending prick and tips poorly.
5. Male, 20s, black. Apartments to nursing home, probably works there.
6. Male, late 40s, Hispanic. My last trip landed me in the far north suburbs, so I move in to pick this guy up at a bar. Bartender called it in. He's too drunk to stand almost. Keeps trying to sit in the front seat on top of my stuff. He doesn't speak very good English in addition to being way too drunk, so I can't get a destination out of him. It's common knowledge not to let a drunk in your cab without a destination. Get out and ask the bartender if she knows where he's going, but she doesn't. Another inebriated customer comes out and starts screaming at him trying to figure out where he's going, but she just annoys and confuses him more. I have to gently pull him away from the front seat which he's leaning near, but he keeps clinging to the interior of the car. I finally get the door closed and locked with him on the outside, but he continues to lean on my cab. While I'm letting the dispatcher know what's going on, he falls practically flat down on his face in the street. He manages to sit up and some passerby watches him so I can take off without running him over.
7. Family of four. Roundtrip to the drive thru.
8. Female, 20s, black. Short trip.
9. Male, 20s, black. Projects to the strip club.

I get sick of my cab at this point because it drives like shit and the ciggarette lighter outlet doesn't work, so I can't use my iPod transmitter, so I exchange it for a different one. The first two I try have other things that don't work, but the third one I try runs.

10. Female, 20s, black. Short trip.
11. No show.
12. Female, 40s, black. Laundromat to home. I don't have enough ones to give her correct change so I have to stiff her a dollar. She half jokingly gives me a hard time, but it's only a $4 trip that I went out of my way for, so fuck her cheap ass.
13. No show at the Children's ER.
14. Female, 20s, black. Very short trip.
15. Female, 30s, black. Short trip.
16. Male, 20s, black, decent trip.
17. Female, 30s maybe 40s, white. Pretty drunk woman at a bar going to meet up with her friends at another bar on the other side of town. First really good trip of the day. She rambles a lot, talks about how some other cabbies she's had are creeps, keeps apologizing for being too drunk, pretty decent tip.
18. Picking up at a strip joint. Guy comes out to tell me to wait, turn the meter on after 5 minutes, dude comes back 10 min later to pay the meter for waiting, found another ride.
19. Show up at the address and a woman and her child come towards my cab. Another car pulls up next to me, I can hear the guy yell at the woman "You called a cab?" "I thought you weren't coming." No one says anything to me, but they get in the other car and take off. Assholes.
20. Female, 40s, black. Takes a plate of food to someone's house and goes back home.
21. Male, 40s, black. Pick a guy up from some other guys house and take him to a hotel. Wonder if they were hooking up.
22. Male, 40s, black. Guy is probably an addict, friendly, pretty talkative, goes halfway across town to go to someone's house for 30 seconds, then hits up another house for a beer, then goes back home. Pretty good trip. Junkies don't mind paying to get where they're going.
23. Show up, no one comes out. Take off. Dispatcher says they called back, try again. No one comes out. Turns out they were at the same address on a different street that ran parallel to the one I was on at a corner house and got the streets confused. Female, 40s, black. Short trip.
24. Show up, honk a couple of times, a woman in a robe comes out to let me know the person I was supposed to pick up was supposed to be sitting on stoop.

[RageAgainstTheAoki]

Dude. Mount a camera? Revive Taxi Cab Confessions? I can't believe someone called a cab to go through a drive-thru. Ha.

[SoulDischarge]

People do it all the time. This was a store type drive thru, not a fast food place. There's a lot of people out there without transportation that don't live within walking distance of a convenience store. Although I have gotten some ridiculous fast food trips in the middle of the night. One girl a few weeks ago paid $20 for a roundtrip cab ride to go to Rally's for like $5 worth of food.

[weeklymix]

If you really want the food I suppose it's better than a DWI / DUI.

Also, it's clear you're already gunning for BMOTY 2012. Cara won't like this thread.

[getbetter]

If you really want the food I suppose it's better than a DWI / DUI.

Also, it's clear you're already gunning for BMOTY 2012. Cara won't like this thread.

It's up to Cara to make her self BMOTY for 2012.

13. No show at the Children's ER. I wonder if something bad happen or someone was trying to escape.

[SoulDischarge]

Nah. People are just idiots. That call went out again later once those people figured out where the fuck they were.

[getbetter]

I wanna make up stories with an wild imagination for what happen for some of these calls.

[fatbastard]

[malcolmjamalawesome]

I support this thread. Big Atkins believer.

[TomAz]

[captncrzy]

I like that it's being broken down by race. A+.

[Alchemy]

I like this thread.

[PlayaDelWes]

I support this thread and everything that has been said about this thread. Looking forward to volume 2.

[Premium Roast]

In mountains of Morocco and had the wrong time on my watch. Frantically packed up, hailed a cab, and headed to the bus station hoping it hadn’t left. There it was, off in the distance rounding a bend, almost teasing us to come get her. “Let’s go. You can do it” told the driver with the theme music to The Natural, Hoosiers, and Chariots of Fire being the undisclosed mental soundtrack. “Look out for the goats!”. Didn’t make it and had to wait eight hours for the evening departure.

My friend owns this company: www.anytaxi.com , distinguishing themselves with the color blue. He use to ride around for twelve or more hours hustling fares in the early years of the company, but now just rents the vehicles to the drivers for $500 a week while he sits on his ass overseas in his home country of Lebanon. Up to eleven cars now. He does pay all the repair work, but that is a nice chunk of change for doing absolutely nothing anymore (eleven vehicles times $2000 every four weeks = $264,000 a year minus vehicle repairs).

[OnlyNonStranger]

Do you help the little old ladies with their groceries?

[algunz]

I think the most interesting call was the man who brought a plate of food to someone. I would imagine it's an ailing family member awaiting the food. Do you ever ask questions? Like who's the food for or stuff like that?

[Hannahrain]

I like this. Please always do it.

[Wheres the beef?]

Meh. Get a tumblr.

[guedita]

Oh, I see. I telepathically let know Patrick know that I was going to start a guedita's daily crab log about irritating minutiae I experience and he decides to go ahead and co-opt it into his own "more relevant" bit. Typical.

[TomAz]

I think you should start that thread anyway, so then I can complain about how derivative it is.

[ods..]

Is it wrong that I'm rooting for a Blue-Velvet-esque voyeuristic drama to unfold?

[Drewbles]

Cool thread; hope you get great tips! Do you allow the passengers to choose the radio station? I enjoy it when the cabbie allows me to crank up the tunes. Bonus tip $$ if they flicker the interior lights to the beat. Jamal from MetroTaxi in Minneapolis is notorious for this; I highly recommend integrating this move into your repertoire.

[amyzzz]

I also support this thread. Anything that keeps Patrick writing is a good thing.

[captncrzy]

Great thread; lasted until 1:15.

[kitt kat]

AMAZING

[chairmenmeow47]

5 stars

[Phenomena]

What does the cab look like? I need a better mental image.

[zimmy1222]

awesome thread, is this NYC?

[Still-ill]

Ohio