Fast Eddie's spin

Fast Eddie remembers the gate at the airport that was operated by quarters.  That gate was before my time.  The idea was, you needed to give the airport $0.50, every time you took passengers out of the cab stand; the gate took quarters, and you needed to plug the little box with 2 quarters to raise the gate.

There were problems with this system.  The one I always hear, or heard about, was that the coin box on that thing wasn't big enough and it would get jammed.  He also mentioned, who got the money?  Who cares.  The passenger is ultimately going to pay it.  No matter how you slice it, or describe it, the Dane County Airport was attempting to control or regulate the cab business on it's property.  Which is OK, the goal is good service for the passengers, right?

The airport also has concerns about security.  They don't want to be the subject of a front page article in the New York Times, describing something bad that happened there.  Unfortunately, in the modern world, we have weirdo's who do bad things.  But I ask myself, what makes the airport any different than anyplace else where a lot of people are congregated in a small area.  Not much difference.  And do I want to be protected, for my own good?  I haven't liked being protected since my earliest recollection of it at 4 or 5 years of age.  Do other people feel the same?  I think most do.  But I was going to discuss the Albany, New York airport for a few blog entries, wasn't I?

They've chosen to deal with a single cab company, and the complaints I've read about recently tell me the cab drivers at that company draw complaints that are hard to dismiss as fiction.  Are those drivers any different than the drivers here?  I doubt it.  Are they different than the drivers at the other area cab companies?  I doubt it.  Is the current system in Albany working?  Doesn't sound like it.  What do you do when the system doesn't work?  Usually, you try something else.

Metered vrs. unmetered cabs. Not all cabs use meters.

I've never driven a metered cab, and I drove cab for 21 years.  Do I know how they work?  Yes.  When I was first learning the business, did I think it would be much easier to drive a metered cab?  Yes.

Driving a metered cab should be easy.  You turn on the meter, put the cab in drive, and away you go.  When more than one passenger is in the cab, it gets complicated for the passengers and the driver.

Meters assume a single passenger.  Ban the practice of taking multiple passengers, and you will go a long way to insuring nobody ever gets ripped off.  A meter can't prevent the driver from taking the scenic route, but getting a receipt for the ride allows the passenger to call the company and see if the fare was reasonable.  The company will tell you the truth, they don't want their drivers ripping off the public, and they will fire a driver for doing it.

How does a non metered cab work?  Simple, you pay for the ride from point A to point B, no matter what route is taken.

How does it work when a metered cab takes multiple passengers?  Good question.  There is going to be a policy that will cover that, but it's open a lot of abuse.  The Albany, New York area airport has a policy to cover that, but is it followed, so the customers get charged fairly?  Probably not.  Why?  Airport people are frequently visitors.  The cab driver casually asks the 2 passengers going to different locations if it is their first time visiting Albany, New York.  They say yes.  They just told that cab driver he can rip them off for as much as he thinks he can get away with, if he's a crook.

If those passengers ask for separate receipts, which they need for their expenses, they are going to get charged for the maximum amount of money the driver can rationalize.  They wanted receipts, and they got them, and those little pieces of paper cost them a small fortune.  The most honest, god fearing driver I've ever met, considers receipts the threshold, if you need a receipt, you pay full fare.  He drives a metered cab, so that full fare receipt is an expensive full fare.  Will his company back him up?  Yes.  Technically, he's done nothing wrong.  Moral of the story?  If you are sharing a ride with another business man, flip a coin to decide who pays and gets the receipt.  Let the other fellow give you a 10 spot out of his petty cash.

Albany, New York

The capital of New York is Albany.  The capital of Wisconsin is here, Madison.  So what?

I read some blog posts in the Albany, New York area, specifically about cab rides to and from the airport.  WOW.  New material to cover, not because it's new to me, it isn't.  It's part of the cab business, but it might be new to them.

They speak of passengers getting ripped off, and ripped off in a big way.  If we were standing around the cab stand at the air port, gossiping about it, we'd be laughing, it's that extreme.  It would seem, it's time to explain how the ride should be billed, and what to do about it if the passenger feels he's being ripped off.  It's also time to discuss what to do, if you the driver feel you're being ripped off.

If I have this correct........  In Albany, the airport contracts with a single cab company to work the cab stand.  If you take a passenger to the airport, and you're not driving one of those cabs, you leave the airport empty, even if there are people standing there begging you to take them.  The reason they do this is to prevent passengers from getting ripped off by some random driver from some random company.  Still they get complaints from passengers, some complaints about huge amounts of money.  They've even tried using investigators posing as passengers, and it hasn't gotten them results.  Let's start with what's wrong with this policy.

Why do I want to take somebody to the airport, if I'm going to drive out of the airport empty, every time?  Can I charge that passenger an extra fee?  Probably not.  The way to make money in a cab is to keep it full as much as possible, and the airport is an out of town ride.  Going there is one of the last things I want to do, all other things being equal.  Let that CHOSEN cab company provide the rides out there, and I'll stay here in town making some money.  That doesn't work, because the passenger calls on the phone, asks for service, and the guy on the radio says if somebody doesn't take the ride, he's going to stop dispatching, so somebody is going to get stuck with that ride to the airport, and let's say it's me.  What fun.  An unprofitable hour.

So, the first thing wrong with this policy, is it negatively effects service GOING TO THE AIRPORT.

There's too much to say about this in a single post, so it will be a series of posts, here ends the first of the series.

A couple of things I have to remember

1) Mike Finnigan, one of the best guys to drive a cab. He's dead of course, like so many cab drivers I once knew. Jesus, I must be getting old. Duane Holloway is also dead, he came here from Key West and drove for around 15 years. Any how........ We're out at the airport, and Mike is driving one of the mini vans as usual. He starts talking about bringing a load of scientists from the Physics Lab in Stoughton to the airport and charging them individual fares (highway robbery!!!). Then he chuckles and says, "Those Canadians tip good too."

2) The Essen Haus has always been a good place to troll for drunks. I'm parked at the end of the awning, and here comes Mike the door man and Neil the guy who always wares the German leather short pants, struggling with this guy who they throw on the pavement right next to the cab. The guy gets up and asks for a ride, and I say ok. He gets in and he's really pissed off. Turns out that he had a 1/2 stein of beer when he went in to the john to take a whiz. When he got back to the bar, he had a full stein, but they had a pitcher so he didn't think anything of it. He starts sipping on his beer and his room mate is laughing his ass off. His room mate continues to laugh his ass off and he finally asks what's so funny. His room mate tells him that he pissed in his beer to bring it up to full. Of course he's not amused.

Know what pissed him off the most? They didn't kick his room mate out, so he can't kick the shit out of his room mate. He bitched all the way to Langdon st., but he tipped well.

I saw Lefty in the grocery store.

First...... I was lucky. I'm here for another month. GOD was/am I lucky, but I'll get into that later.


Lefty and I talked for 5 or 10 minutes. It was good to see him. Nice guy, he wanted to say hi, but he didn't really want to listen to me rant about the company. From what he said, I'm wondering when the company goes up for sale publicly. Not that the company is broke or anything, but the owner is old enough and wealthy enough to get out. It's a sole ownership, so if they got a lunatic that did something 'newsworthy' with a cab, lawyers would be going after him. Yeah, he's got insurance but it's not cheap. I'm fairly sure that if someone offered him close to his price, he'd get out.

Lefty is a real good guy, I hope his life goes well, and I'll miss him. Most of the others don't realize what thin ice they're standing on. How so? Well..........

The company is in a growing market, but it's not growing. They spend almost NOTHING on sales. One of the reasons I was considered a trouble maker was I would suggest that effort be spent on new business. I was told, by the owner, that accepting plastic was the great move to drum up new business. No, I'm not kidding. That said............

They lost M+, I just found that out. They are losing almost all the rest of the MA (medical assistance) rides soon. They can barely keep 20 cabs out on week daytime hours. Roy Boy knew I'd be critical, and he knew this was coming 16-18 months ago, I think. (I'm very sure) So, all the loyal, ride it down in flames crowd, will end up abandoned. I wonder what that fat idiot who started the argument in the office will do for a living. The dispatchers will all go down the road, and who wants to add them to the staff at another company in town? Nobody, those jobs go to loyal drivers.

Thanks Roy. I know you only wanted to cover your butt, and you probably promised yourself that someday you'd fire me before you retired. Ok, you kept your promise to yourself. Now, guess what? When you get finished going down with the ship, you're unemployable too, and nobody is going to care. How many loyal friends did you shaft for that end? Idiot.

That's ok. I believed you were my friend. I'm an idiot too.

A great line

"On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." Told you it was great!

I have to move, AGAIN. It's not my fault, some things aren't anybody's fault, it's just the way something works out. I have high hopes, that the new digs will be an improvement. The dog just rolls his eyes and moans........................ He hates to move more than I do.

Slick Willy made one of the most astute comments ever made by a public figure in the United States, life isn't fair. I told the dog that, and he again rolled his eyes and moaned. I can turn that behavior off with a dog biscuit. Wish I could ping myself into the new digs with a dog biscuit.

The new digs will be about a block from one of America's greatest tourist lakes. If somebody had asked me if it was the coolest place on earth to live when I was 8, I probably would have said yes, and even said yes including winter in Wisconsin. So life will change a little.

I doubt I will ever again hit one of those writers groups after this coming Tuesday. Which is ok, the guy who runs the group would rather I didn't come anyway. He's a retired mailman, and he asked me why anybody would find a book about cab driving interesting anyway. After all, he has dozens of dog chases mailman stories. What would I call a book of cab driving stories anyway?

This bothered me a lot. Discouraged me greatly. Then it occurred to me that it isn't so much that he thinks the idea of a book of cab driving stories is dumb, he's jealous. Jealous of what? The world is full of stories, some of them are first person experiences, some of them are simply made up, most of them are out there in front of us, and we watch them happen every day.

Well, let's see..... I could say it's procedural. We have procedural cop opera's, how many dominate prime time? A bunch. We have story TV, stuff like 60 Minutes, and that's been popular. could we have mailman adventure? Sure. We had (have) a mailman, he's been a cab driver for over 20 years, as well as a mailman. We HAD another mailman, but he escaped, Opie is a mailman to this day, and he doesn't drive cab anymore.

Our mailman has had his ups and downs. Armed robbery is again a theme. He was a day driver when I started. He must have a hell of a mailman pension coming, he'd been a mailman for a while back then. Anyhow, like many of us, me included, he got greedy and decided nights was the time to drive. Then he got robbed. I don't know the details of that one, but I do know that it showed on his face for years, and that his wife said no more driving nights. And that stuck for a long time, perhaps 10 years. He's a night driver these days to the best of my knowledge. For YEARS I could see it on his face.

People who do stuff like that don't see it that way. They only see it from their own perspective. When the robbery is over, the robber is done with it, he's off work, and it's time to think about grocery shopping or otherwise spending the money.

Part of me thinks society is way too soft. There should be consequences for doing things like that. Consequences? Yes, consequences.

A couple of poor under privileged minority youth with a knife or something that looks (either is or isn't real) like a gun shouldn't have free rein to crap on some fairly innocent middle class guy who is simply trying to pay his mortgage. They don't have free rein? There are laws.... Yeah, right. They don't care if they get caught, they're young, they don't have anything to lose except a few hours of their time, and if they succeed they're hero's to their friends. The system almost forces them to do stuff like that.

And the cab company, what do they do about it? What would I have them do? I'm not sure. I do know this, the few of us who win such little incidents (regardless of the psychological effects of simply being in the situation) seem to leave for one reason or another.

too funny

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/165925/crazy_japanese_port_o_potty_prank/

This is perhaps the funniest thing I've ever seen on the internet. Do watch the whole thing too, it looks like the same prank over and over, but it isn't. The second prank is much funnier than the first prank, and the first prank is pretty funny.

I'm not sure how many of my readers have ever used a portable john, I try to avoid them myself, they always stink. I do have a personal funny porta john story though....

When I first visited Wisconsin, a friend and I were hitch hiking. The end of the trip was East Lansing, my traveling companion was a Michigan State student. The plan was to take the car ferry from Milwaukee to Luddington, which we did (it is Sooooooooooooo cold on Lake Michigan in the middle of the night). Some guy gave us a ride out of Luddington, so there we were standing by a 2 lane highway just outside of town at about 5 in the morning. Who should pull over but a guy pumping out porta johns. He was heading to Lansing too, said we'd get there about noon. So we spent the last morning of our trip riding to every little town fair, and construction site that had a porta john. He'd get out, hook up the pump, run it for about 3 minutes, and toss in a roll of toilet paper.

When was the last time you got a ride in a truck pumping out porta johns?