Soul's Daily Cab Log

[SoulDischarge]

Thanks for the mostly supportive post and slightly backhanded compliment. It's definitely pretty remarkable and wonderful to have a job I mostly enjoy. If I can transition this into a city I love, I might actually have a shot at being sort of content or whatever.

[Alchemy]

Is there an airport that you can wait for incoming visitors, or is that not such a lucrative thing where you are? When I was living in New York City, I pretty much only ever used a taxi when I was returning to the city. When you exit La Guardia Airport, there is a little spot on the side of it where taxis line up and collect everybody coming out.

[SoulDischarge]

There's a small airport nearby, but we have to go through some kind of TSA licensing ordeal to be able to pick up there that they say isn't worth it, so we don't pick up there. We drop off there occasionally though. Unlike bigger cities, our trips come pretty much solely through dispatch (or for veteran drivers, personal calls).

[fudgumslover]

bump bump bump

I love this thread, keep it up.

[SoulDischarge]

I didn't get around to posting yesterday, so today's a double hitter.

Weds. 2/22/12
5:30pm-10:00pm.
This was a short day because my friend called me half way through the shift and told me about a semi-cool thing happening downtown that night, and considering I haven't done anything besides work and lay around the house for 3 weeks and Wednesday nights are typically dead, I only stayed out about 4 1/2 hours.

1. 5:38-5:52. Female, 60s/70s?, white. Old woman going to the drugstore and back. Said she thought I was a different driver she had once that she had wanted to hit over the head with her oxygen tank. Went into the store without her tank and was proud of how well she did without it. Go team.
2. 6:04-6:08. Female, 40s/50s?, black. Going to the grocery store. She overheard the dispatcher talking to another driver about how maybe he was being gruff with a passenger that driver was picking up, but that's just how he is, which started my passenger ranting about how people should be decent to one another and all that shit. I always try to explain to people that the reason dispatchers are assholes is because they spend all day getting cussed out over something they can't control, but no one really cares.
3. 6:19-6:25. Female, 40s, white. Trailer park to grocery store. This woman smelled strongly like a litter box to the point of it kind of choking me up while she was in the cab. Luckily it was a short fare.
4. 6:33-6:43. Male, 40s, white. Brother of someone at the cab company, truck broke down in a grocery store parking lot, going to a bar.
5. 6:48-6:43. Female, 40s, black. Grocery store to home.
6. 7:11-7:16. Male, 20s, black.
7. 7:25-7:38. Female, 40s, white. Stripper going home from work.
8. 7:44-7:46. Male, 50s?, white. This guy is a regular, always goes home from a different local restaurant/pub. He catches a cab to work at the court house every morning too. I'll refer to him as Barker from here on out.
9. No show.
10. 8:15-8:20. Female, 23, black. Girl going home from the police station court house, asks if I've ever gone through a custody battle before. Vents a bit about it and her baby daddy (says she's 23 and he's 35).
11. 8:29-8:33. Female, 60s?, white. This is a regular SCAT passenger that only goes two blocks away. She rides pretty much every weekday. It's not bad getting $6 to go 2 blocks, but she always takes forfuckingever getting in and out of the cab and has a bunch of bags with her. I'll call her Margaret from here on out.
12. 8:39-8:43.
13. 8:50-8:54. Male and female, 20s, black. Going home from the ER.
14. 9:01-9:10. This is the androgynous person I mentioned in an earlier log, always goes to the same place. I guess I'll call them Glen Or Glenda?
15. 9:17-9:25. Female, 20s, black. Girl going home from a nail salon with a stop at the drugstore.
16. 9:28-9:37. Two females, 30s, black. Going home from Mexican restaurant, got the vibe that they were a couple.
17. 9:43-9:52. Male, 20s, black.

Pretty dull, short day, but I made really decent money for the amount of time I worked.

[ods..]

Digging the characters.

[SoulDischarge]

Thurs. 2/23/12.
6:00pm-3:15am.

1. 6:07-6:16. Female, 40s, white. Going from the ER to home. Said she has migraines all day but by the time she got to the ER she felt better so decided not to see anyone and save some money. Asked what kind of music I was listening to (it was the Nina Kraviz RA podcast). Asked me to write out a receipt. Asked how far we had gone, 2.8 miles, said she could have jogged that since that's about how long her daily jog is.
2. 6:30-6:42. Female, 20s, black. I pulled up and honked in front of this apartment building on a really busy street. Didn't stick around for too long and got another trip when no one came out. By the time I got to the other house, the first person called back and specified to go in the back parking lot, so I went back. Girl going to work at strip club.
3. 6:44-6:52. Male, 20s, black. South side to east side, we bitched about how old people are shitty drivers.
4. Showed up to this house, after a minute, a guy comes to the door and gives me the "wait a minute" signal. Wait five minutes. Turn the meter on. At some point another person goes in the house. Another five minutes go by and no one comes out. I take off.
5. 7:21-7:27. Regular, goes home from work. I'll call him Owen.
6. 7:31-7:37. Regular, Barker.
7. 7:54-8:14. Black male & white female, 20s. Dispatcher is pleading for someone to pick up these people who called in advance to place a time call that was supposed to be picked up over an hour ago. It bugs the hell out of me that people have to wait so fucking long for a cab, so I offer to jump on the highway and get them even though they're on the complete other side of town. I don't turn the meter on for the first mile to make up for the delay. They end up tipping me anyway, $20 trip, worth the effort. I give them my number to get ahold of when they get done at the bar so they don't end up waiting another hour or so to get home, but as usual, they never fucking text or call.
8. 8:25-8:44. Male, 60s?, white. This guy is a regular, we'll call him Frank. He depresses the hell out of me. He's a nice enough guy and always tips well, but he's just in awful shape, all hunched over and moves at a snails pace. One time I had to walk him to his apartment in his building because he was worried about someone robbing him or something, I don't know. Says he used to be a well regarded professor at the local university. I usually pick him up at the same bar and take him home, but this time he just runs to the liquor store and back home.
9. 8:54-8:59. Female, 30s, black.
10. 9:01-9:09. Female, 40s?, white. Goes from this school for gifted students (that I got rejected from when I tried to apply when I was a kid, ruining all my chances at an extraordinary life) to the transit center downtown.
11. 9:28-9:49. Female, 30s, black. Get a call at a laundromat downtown. No one comes out and the doors are locked because they had just closed, although there's still people inside. I take off. She calls back so I pick her up. She has to stop at someone's house to pick up her kids, which takes a really long time because one of them hid something and she had to find it before they could leave or something. The whole thing took way too fucking long, but she seemed pretty stressed out so I couldn't be too irritated with her.
12. Showed up to the wrong house (some addresses are really fucking hard to read, although this one was pretty pathetic on my behalf, mistaking a 4 for a 2). Take off. They call back. Show up again. They decide they don't want the cab after all.
13. 10:31-10:40. Male, 30s, white. Really bitter seeming guy going to the gay bar. Says he's never been to this particular bar before and doesn't even know where it is. We talk about how Akron is a hell hole. He said he used to live in Cleveland but had to move back because his mom got cancer. Some guy pays on the other end.
14. 10:59-11:13. Male, 20s, black. Had a no show at this house yesterday, but got someone this time, and not a bad trip at $20 either.
15. 11:21-11:48. Males, 20s, black. Guy going to Walmart and back, surprised at how quickly the waiting time adds up while he's in the store.
16. 11:59-12:14. Male and two females, 40s, white. Pick up at a strip bar for some regulars that work there. The guy and one of the girls gets dropped off at one address, the other girl at a different one. She's talking on the phone with someone about some other stripper. She's trying to figure out which one the guy's talking about. "The one with the fucked up teeth? You said she's new? You mean the one with the fake boobs? I don't think she looks like a man. She did not have a sex change." Something along those lines. I guess the guy got a compromising picture of her on his phone and wants to send it to my passenger, but she doesn't have a photo capable phone. She asks if I do and if he can send it to mine, which how can I refuse? But the guy says he'd have to search for it so no dice.
17. 12:21-12:35. Two females, 40s, white. Going home from a bar, pretty good trip. One of them talks about how some cab driver they used to know uses to shuttle her and a bunch of other girls around to the bars and end up just partying and drinking with them.
18. No show at the projects where we get a lot of no shows.
19. 12:53-1:14. Female, 20s, white. Pick this girl up from the strip club and she is a holy fucking mess. Probably pilled out and drunk. She slides into my cab and tells me we have to wait, just please wait a minute, she'll pay me extra. She's waiting for some guy, a customer or something, and he's not coming out. After five minutes she tells me where we're going so I start taking off but after a few seconds she's back to "please just wait a minute" so I back into a spot again and turn on the meter for waiting time. She falls out of the cab and drops her shit everywhere as she goes back in trying to find whoever it is she's trying to find. Gets back in the cab alone and is just mumbling to herself. Take her to another bar in a different part of town. She ends up tipping me $7 over the meter. I'm pretty sure she left her phone in my cab too. Another passenger found it in the back seat and it would make sense that it belonged to this chick. The screen display on the phone said "Butterfly."
20. 1:29-1:36. Female, 40s, white. Another call where they don't come out the first time I pull up. It's not like I don't give them enough time or honk loud enough. They just don't pay attention. Anyway, it's a raggedy looking woman who smells like chlorine. Some guy pays for her upfront. She's talkative and friendly.
21. 1:40-2:02. Female, 20s, white. Pick this girl up at a biker bar on the south side of town, going to the far north suburbs. Really good fair. She vents about her shitty night, how someone grabbed her purse, how some roided out guy was being an asshole to her and her friends didn't stick up for her, all this shit. She's pretty friendly towards me though and gives a very generous tip even after the fare being close to $40.
22. 2:32-2:48. Female, 30s, white. This girl has obviously been crying a lot and sniffles the whole way to where she's going. Gives me a vague location and ends up getting dropped off at a gas station where she walks on from.
23. 2:54-2:58. Female, 20s/30s, black. Dispatcher asks me to see if they need another cab at this address (our max capacity is 4 passengers). Show up, this woman with a reddish afro comes out, asks how much it'd be to go to these project towers a little down the road, I ask her how many people she has, she says 8, I say I'll have to get another cab out there to cover the overflow, she goes back to the house, a dude in his boxers sticks his head out the window asking why we have to send another cab, turns out she was asking if $8 would cover the trip since the guy is paying upfront for her, she's the only person going. Take her to her destination.

Another really profitable night. There's a ton of drivers who lease a cab out for the day but don't take many trips from dispatch, so there's typically plenty of trips for me to take. It kind of sucks because it puts the dispatchers in a shitty mood and people end up waiting absurd amounts of time (one guy waited three hours to get picked up from a bar tonight), but it's putting money in the pockets of anyone willing to work for it, such as myself.

[TheClares]

Love these posts, and that we are naming regulars now. I'd say Glen/da for the androgynous guy/gal, using a similar convention in the future, i.e. Bob/ette, Brian/na, etc. Remind me to avoid strip clubs in Akron.

[gazercmh]

I'm enjoying this, thanks for posting.

How often do people leave their cell phones in your cab? Does the cab company get the phones back to people, or do you sell them on ebay or whatever? I've had three friends lose theirs in cabs. Do people leave much other stuff in your cab? Any interesting items?

[Alchemy]

Can you take a picture of your cab, and the place where you go and get it?

[JustSteve]

4. 6:33-6:43. Male, 40s, white. Brother of someone at the cab company, truck broke down in a grocery store parking lot, going to a bar.

do people like that, relatives, ever expect free rides?

[SoulDischarge]

No, but some times the dispatcher will authorize us to charge it to company.

[captncrzy]

Can you take a picture of your cab, and the place where you go and get it?

Yes, please!

[SoulDischarge]

It's a typical Crown Vic. The one I'm scheduled on is white, but a lot of them are yellow, and some are grey. It's not at all exciting. I don't know why you people want to see pictures of cabs.

[captncrzy]

We want you posing in front of it. Also, pics of the ppl you pick up.

[algunz]

Can you take a picture of your cab, and the place where you go and get it?

Careful, Alchemy is gonna steal your book deal.

[SoulDischarge]

New Years Eve. That's all you're getting. Untap the wondrous potential of your infinite imaginations for the rest.

[Alchemy]

That's a beautiful helm. A disco ball!

[TheClares]

We want you posing in front of it. Also, pics of the ppl you pick up.

Like this...

[SoulDischarge]

I got some major catching up to do, 3 days worth. Nothing too special happened on Saturday, it was remarkably slow for a Saturday and I'm already forgetting trips, so I'm just gonna do Sunday and Monday.

Sun. 2/26/12
6:45pm-1:00am.

1. 6:47-7:06. Male and female, 20s, black. Going to the movie theater.
2. 7:18-7:28. Two kids, black. This guy put his kids and a bunch of bags of stuff in the cab and told me someone would pay on the other end. They were rowdy the entire ride but I didn't say anything. They kept coming up with weird insults for each other like "you smell like butt Jesus cow."
3. 7:35-7:43. Male, 30s, black. This guy gets in my cab and wants to know if I can take him to the north side (from downtown) for $4. He smells fucking terrible the way homeless people do some times. I say yeah because it's just over the bridge and it wouldn't be much more than $4. On the way he says he wants to go to a certain bar, but I get another trip in the opposite direction. I stop to drop him off once I get off the highway and he tries to get me to take him to the bar, but it's like a 10-15 minute walk from there and the meter's already at $6. I feel like kind of a dick, but I don't run a charity and I got other trips to run. He just kind of sits in the back of the cab like I'm going to take him if he doesn't move for a minute or two before finally getting out.
4. 7:50-8:12. Female, 20s, white. Take a stripper home from work, stop at Subway on the way. She's a regular.
5. No show.
6. No show/cancellation at a strip club where I pretty much always get no shows/cancellations.
7. 8:44-9:09. Five people, male and female, 40s, and three kids, black. Pick them up from a buffet. The kind of weird thing is two weeks prior, when I was having an anxiety attack and had to get off the road, I had had a lost call at the same strip club and then the next trip was at the same buffet. Anyway, they had five people, and you're supposed to call another cab to handle the overflow, but it felt dickish. The guy and one of the kids was only going up the road, but the woman and the two other kids were going from the far south side to the west side. She kept trying to tell me to take this one street that goes way out of the way, but I insisted that this other street was much shorter and would save her money. She said she was from out of town. When we got to where she recognized, she realized it was way quicker and thanked me. She asked me about what the neighborhood on the west side was like because she had been looking at a house on some street there.
8. 9:15-9:21. I forget what this trip was.
9. 9:41-9:49. Female, 50s/60s, black. Some lady in her robe and slippers going to the drive-thru around the corner for cigarettes.
10. 9:56-10:02. Three males, two white one black, one female, white. I had picked these kids up from a gambling place the day before, they seem typical Akron deadbeat kids. This time they were going from a different place than I had dropped them off at on Sat. (this time in a house with fake deer in the front that I thought were real for a split second) to the same gambling place.
11. 10:08-10:28. Male, 30s, white. This guy is a regular, I've had him once before but he says he rides all the time. Gay guy who always goes to gay bars but never tells you to drop him off there, always somewhere right near it like he's ashamed or something, I don't know. He's really reserved, but last time I happened to drop him off at the bar and pick him up on the same night and he's pretty talkative and friendly when drunk. He always tips good, pretty much a guaranteed $20 no matter where he's going.
12. No show. There wasn't any trips open near me, so I took a chance on a trip on the far west suburb (which is the wealthy district), which ended up being over 15 min away on the highway. They canceled just as I was getting near of course. I took the opportunity to sit and eat my salad I had bought earlier and wait for something to open up close to me. The closest thing to open up ended up being right near where I had came from. Some times you take a chance it doesn't pan out.
13. 10:58-11:02. Male and female, 60s/70s, white. These guys are regulars although they don't usually ride this late. I'll call them Darlene and Earl. They usually go from home to a nearby restaurant, or vice versa. I kind of hate taking them because they're old and slightly obnoxious and never go far, although they're pretty nice to me. The woman seems kind of spacey and likes to ramble about inane bullshit, and the guy gets really annoyed with her and I've seen him blow up at her and tell her to shut up, which she never does. This time they went to the sub shop attached to the hipster bar, which at this time of night has got to be an odd match as it's mostly drunken people in their 20s and 30s there. I consciously try to avoid picking them up later by not calling on any trips in that area until I hear them go out over the radio.
14. 11:12-11:50. Two males, 20s, black. I pick these guys up from a wing restaurant downtown, although it seems like a no show at first. As soon as they get in, I'm regretting picking them up and my better instincts are telling me to ask for cash up front, but I don't. They're both fucked up and the one guy falls asleep almost literally the second he gets in the cab, and the other guy is giving me kind of vague directions where to go. He keeps telling the drunk guy he's gonna get him back (for passing out I guess?), and calls some girl and keeps telling her she better be ready. We end up at a house and this kind of dorky looking white girl comes out and gets in the cab. The guy can't figure out where they're going from there, but they decide on some motel deep in the southwest suburb (which we're already on the edge of). They stop at the ATM and a gas station drive-thru and spend $30 on beer and stuff. It ends up being over $30 for the trip so I'm glad my better instincts were wrong on this one.
15. 12:05-12:12. Female, 30s, black. I move in to the closest thing on the southwest side of town. I take a woman to the west side and her husband pays on the other end.
16. 12:21-12:31. Male, 20s, white. Get a trip at a fried chicken joint. End up at the wrong one because I didn't realize there was another one on that side of town, so I think it's a lost call, but find the guy at the one I was supposed to go to (luckily only about 5 minutes apart). Scrawny little ghetto white boy type that's exceedingly common here getting off work. His great big fat father (I assume) pays on the other end.
17. No show at these apartments we get calls from all the time. Never get much of anything good out of there anyway.

It's slowing down in a major way and since it's Sunday, I assume it won't pick back up, and since I've made $80-$90 already, I decide to turn the cab in instead of wasting time and letting my lease rise when there's no trips to run.

[algunz]

I would love to have some dialogue for ride 13.

[Stickjohn]

The Criminal Minds episode with the cabbie was on last night. He selects victims from his fares based on their smell, gasses them in the back of his cab with vaporized chloroform or something, and then extracts their essence while embalming them back in his lab to create a perfume.

I also watched Commando on Sunday. I keep thinking of you when I watch tv now.

[algunz]

Yes, Commando has taken on a whole new meaning for me.

[SoulDischarge]

Mon. 2/27/12
5:45pm-4:15am.

Monday's are usually one of our busiest days for whatever reason, but it was strangely slow for the early part of the day to the point where I thought I might just call it quits after a couple of hours and be satisfied with taking home $40 or something, but we ended up only having 5 drivers out at night so I kept busy and ended up bringing home about $180.

1. 6:03-6:17. Male, 40s, white. Guy going to drugstore and back. Told me about the shootings in Chardon, which I hadn't heard about because I don't pay attention to the world.
2. 6:24-6:30. Female, teens/early 20s, white. Picked this girl up down the street from my house, her dad paid on the other end, he seemed like one of those really aggressive right wing REAL 'MERICAN types, paid half the $6 fare in change.
3. 6:44-6:53. Male, 20s, white. Picked this guy up from where I usually pick up this stripper (guess he's her boyfriend), had to go downtown for some drug class or something, wanted me to put in a time call for someone to pick him up after the class was over at 8pm.
4. 6:56-7:01. Male and female, 40s, white. Picked them up from a sleazy motel just outside of downtown (although they were actually standing outside and next door to it when I showed up, probably were about to start walking without calling in to cancel). Guy said he hadn't been in town for 15 years, blah blah blah. They were here for a Pink Floyd tribute show at the theater downtown. Crusty old nostalgia trips. Asked if I liked Floyd ("Ehhhhh I'm more into the Barrett era . . ."). Asked for my number so I could pick them up but I accidentally gave them the wrong one because my brain stopped working and switched it up. Oh well.
5. Lost call at a gas station. Went in to piss while I was stopped, some lady with two kids asked for a ride around the corner as I was leaving, wasn't going to charge them, but she asked how much, charged her $3. (Flag down is $2.75, so it probably would have been $3.10 or $3.55 as far as they went).
6. 7:37-7:39. Male, 60s, white. Picked up the day driver on the cab I'm scheduled at from the bar he always goes to a few blocks from his house.
7. 8:04-8:11. Female, 50s, black, with a kid. Called on this because I was hoping it'd be the guy I put the time call in for (it was a decent fare), ended up being a pick up at the Children's ER. Some times when we pick up there, dispatch tells us to see security, who gives us a voucher for the fare (I think they used to give cash up until very recently). After I got the voucher, I couldn't find the actual passengers, had to go back to security, they told me to check the main desk (different from the waiting room desk), by the time I got there they had already gone out to the waiting room where I found them. The whole ordeal took like 15 minutes, which is a huge annoying waste of time when you're a cabbie, especially since they weren't going all that far.
8. 8:18-8:28. Male, 30s, black. Too much cologne.
9. 8:55-9:03. Male, 20s, black.
10. 9:20-9:27. Male, 40s, black. Dispatch was trying to get this short SCAT off and was offering $10 off the lease to grab it, with a cash trip to pick up after we dropped them off, but no one was taking it. There were a couple of trips right near me, and this was kind of on the other side of town, but it was a guaranteed $20 more or less, and since I was figuring I wasn't going to make any money that day, it seemed like a good way to get off the road faster, so I jumped on the highway to get it. Guy going home from dialysis.
11. 9:29-9:39. Male, 30s, black. Guy going home from grocery store.
12. 10:02-10:06. Male, 20s/30s, black. Guy with a dog (a boxer). I don't think we have to take animals if they're not in a cage or carrier or whatever, but it wasn't a big deal.
13. 10:30-10:56. I decided to go downtown to pick up these charges that get put out every weeknight at 10:30 (well, we pick them up at 10:30, but dispatch puts out the trips at 10:15, time calls always go out 15 min in advance). You pick up some people that seem to be developmentally disabled from work at this government administration building downtown. They're not the best charges, I think it's like $1.50/mi instead of the regular $2.25, but it's guaranteed money and can be alright. This time I was supposed to pick two of them up going to the southwest suburb, flat $20 charge for taking both of them, even though the second guy was about 11 or 12 miles away (and the other guy was on the way). The second guy gave me a ton of drawings he did. Two were on like clear engineering type paper and the others were this stack of over 200 notecards (he has them numbered). They're really simplistic and of like racecars and people and basic abstract shapes. I'll have to take some pictures of some of them some time. I felt weird taking them but it seemed like he really wanted me to have them.
14. 11:18-11:30. Two females, 20s, black. Since there were no trips near me at all and there were only five of us on the road at this point, I had to go all the way back downtown for my next trip. This was two girls getting off of work at a women's shelter, one of them I had picked up a few days before. They stopped at a gas station on the way home that incidentally was where my next trip was at, so I had to tell him I'd be back in a few after I dropped them off.
15. 11:33-11:45. Male, 40s?, white. This guy is a regular, goes home from work at the gas station.
16. 11:53-11:59. Female, 30s, black. This chick was in a really good mood and commented on how nice it was out, even though it had gotten cold after night fell. Guy paid on the other end.
17. 12:12-12:20. Female, 20s/30s?, white. Took her home from a bar downtown, she seemed pretty drunk, passed her street without her noticing and had to turn around.
18. 12:26-12:36. Male, 20s, black. This guy says he sees me a lot, but I don't really recognize him. Take him to a bar, and he thinks he lost a blunt in my cab. I tell him to lift up the seat (it's one big cushion that pops right off) but he can't find it. Tells me to smoke it for him if I find it.
19. 12:43-12:48. Female, 50s, white. Take some woman home from work at a plant, she's a cheapskate and expects me to give her back the coin change (like a quarter or something).
20. 12:57-1:02. Female, 20s, black.
21. 1:08-1:17. Male, 30s, white. Take this guy from a bar near the university downtown to his home on the west side. I can't tell if he's slightly retarded and drunk or just really drunk. He keeps saying "It's all good! It's all good!" Gives me a $20 even though the fare's only like $13.
22. 1:26-1:30. Male, 20s, black.
23. No show at a bar downtown.
24. 1:46-1:52. Male, 30s, black. Take this guy a little bit across town, says he used to be a driver, says he should start driving again, talks about how you gotta carry a weapon and make sure you have the passengers in the rearview mirror at all times.
25. 1:58-2:03. Male, 50s, white. McDonalds to home, says he had been walking a couple of miles to get there already.
26. Go from the north side to the west side for a no show.
27. 2:24-3:00. Female, 20s/30s?, black. Going to Walmart and back to cash a check. The closest Walmart is a $20 ride away, so it ends up being a $40 trip.
28. 3:11-3:28. Male, 20s, black. Show up at this house and this woman comes out and says something along the lines of "Please wait, he's coming, he really needs to leave, you can run the meter." I sit there for 5-10 minutes with the meter running as they fight and he finally comes out, saying she's crazy and talking about "ho drama" and if she wasn't his wife he'd do something or another. He wants to go to the west side, but I accidentally get on the highway going to wrong way. Get off at the first stop and he decides to stop at the gas station there and then just get dropped off back near where I picked up him ("but please don't drop me off back there, I ain't going back there tonight").
29. 3:35-3:41. Male, 20s, black. Young white guy in his underwear comes out and gives me the wait a minute signal, the other dude comes out and I take him home.
30. 4:10-4:15. Pick up the day driver for my cab and take him to the garage (he gets picked up every single day at 4:00am).

[chiapet]

1) What kind of person expects coin change back from their fare? If I pay the exact dollar amount (meaning only rounding up to the next dollar), it's because I think the taxi driver was an asshole and am trying to make a point. I didn't think they even carried coins for change?

2) IS it common for drivers to carry a weapon of some type? I remember drivers here used to talk about that a lot, but I think these days they make it tough for them to get a permit, since they don't carry extremely large amounts of cash. Driving around some parts of Akron at night can be kind of sketchy, though, no? Are there parts of the city that you / the company doesn't take calls from, or do you pretty much cover whatever comes in?

3) Did you ever find the blunt?

[SoulDischarge]

1. A cheapskate douchebag. I've had a lot of change in my pockets lately but I don't typically carry coins as a matter of course. I usually don't expect them to pay the change if it's less than $0.50 over the dollar, and the majority of the time they give me the rounded up dollar anyway.

2. A lot do, I think, even though it's not permitted. I've been meaning to get some Hornet's Spray, which is what they recommended at training since it's supposedly the same as mace but isn't considered a weapon or whatever, but I'm cheap and don't want to spend my money on it. I wouldn't ever carry a gun though. I'd just get shot with my own weapon. We take calls from all neighborhoods. A good majority of our calls are from the hood and projects, since those are the people who don't have their own cars. When I first started driving, I was pretty freaked out waiting around in the projects, but I've picked up in them all so many times it doesn't faze me any more. I'm maybe a little more on my guard when I pick up a young dude from the projects, but most of them just want to get where they're going with as little hassle as possible.

3. Nope. I didn't really look for it either. He probably left it at home.

[romanticizer]

I just lurk this thread but I just wanted to say how much I appreciate it.

[chiapet]

That reminds me, Patrick, you've mentioned a lot of them pre-pay (or at least offer some cash up front). I've never seen that done anywhere but Cleveland/Akron. Is that a normal thing, you think? My brother frequently offers to pre-pay (but he almost always asks to run trips off the meter too). He claims he had better luck getting cabs that way, back when he lived in a not-so-great area.

I'm also really surprised by the number of people who seem to offer you just a little less than what the cost of the trip would be. It never occurred to me that I could pay a cab driver less than fare.

[shoegazer76]

How often do fares ask you to hook them up with illicit substances? Probably not so much since you don't pick up fares from the airport. Just curious because its a relatively common thing here in Vegas.

[SoulDischarge]

Most people do pay the full amount, I'm the one who says don't worry about it when they start digging for a dime or whatever.

I haven't had a single person ask me where to get drugs. Probably because a lot of them are already high when they get in my cab.