I saw Bobbie at the grocery store today

He was the trainer when I started.  He looked real good, and he didn't remember me.

Blog referer spam

Interesting.  I'd never heard of this before this morning.

You think people are willingly viewing your web pages, but they are not.  They are being redirected to your website by a virus toolbar, or your traffic is simply something similar to a virus checking your website on a daily basis.  It's automated, so it looks like you're getting hits, but you're not.  It explains all the traffic to this blog from the Soviet Union.  It explains all the views of the very first entry in the blog.

This has nothing to do with cab driving, but everything to do with the internet.  And blogging.  And scams.  So, it should be of interest to a wide spectrum of people.  I'll read up on it, and post some entries addressing it, and after they've been up long enough for my legitimate readers to read them, if they want to read them, I'll take them down.

Certain subjects are like a magnet for these web traffic fraud people.  They love guns.  They love violence.  I'll add crime in the labels, and let all of you know how this works out.  This is a distinctly uninteresting blog post, it shouldn't attract ANY interest, what so ever.

An absolutely PRICELESS link to another cab drivers comments!!

This link belongs to a driver in Las Vegas.  It's a question and answer thing.

http://jobstr.com/threads/show/3661-las-vegas-cab-driver

His answers are VERY TRUTHFUL.  I found this thing while tracing some traffic to this blog.  It seems that a whole lot of people on the web want to know if cabbies carry guns.  My most recent post, posted just a few hours ago, gives my opinion about this matter.  The answer is, yes some carry them, and if they ever use it, they will regret carrying it for the rest of their life.

My dad's sister was married to a fellow who shot some people who held up his liquor store.  They tied him up, he got lose, and he killed a couple of them.  Their families harassed him for the rest of their lives.  Anonymous threats, but it was obvious where they were coming from.  Is that worth a couple of hundred dollars?  No.

Some people point to murders, and say, if the victim had a gun, it might have been different.  I read that in New Orleans a lot of cab drivers have been murdered.  It wouldn't be different unless the people doing it are morons, and they're not, they're criminals.  Why do I say that?

A guy came up behind me once with a big shiny impressive looking hunting knife and demanded money.  I thought to myself, if he was going to cut me, I'd be cut.  Obviously he doesn't intend on using that thing.  I walked away from him, he was shocked, and he didn't cut me.  Moral?  If somebody is going to kill you, they won't give you a chance to resist.  They might go through the, where is the rest of the money routine, but you're dead either way.  Giving them the extra money might buy you 90 seconds of extra terror, but you're dead either way.

The carrying guns post.

For some strange reason there have been over 1,000 views of a post I did quite a while back, which says carrying a weapon is a real bad idea.  It specifically says, carrying a gun is a bad idea, but carrying any weapon is bad.

Have I known guys who carried guns?  Yes.  Knives?  Yes.  Clubs?  Yes.  Fools.  Do you need a weapon?  Aren't you driving a rather large one?  It's the best bet you've got, the only one you can defend using.  Defend using?  Sure.  The cops assume ALL participants are the bad guy, do you want to be an armed bad guy?

Consider:  Somebody tries to rob you, they get hurt, and they file assault charges.  Now what happens?  They are going to ditch their weapon before they talk to the cops, unless they're dead or close to it, and even then, can you prove it was their weapon and not one you planted in their hand?  If you were armed, and you hurt them with that weapon, the cops could very well take you to jail.  This happened recently in Florida.  Some neighborhood watch guy killed some kid, claimed it was self defense, and the trial was the biggest news event in the United States for how long?  A week?  A month?  It's ongoing.  The current result is, the guy was acquitted, and there are huge demonstrations going on all over the country.  Thousands of people want the guy in prison.  Do you want thousands of enemies, for any reason?  Probably not.

What happens if they take a cab driver to jail for the injury of a passenger.  Is the cab company going to bail you out of jail?  Unlikely.  Do you have a permit to carry that thing?  Unlikely.  Is that weapon consistent with cab company policy?  ABSOLUTELY NOT!!  Will they let you out of jail on a signature bond?  Unlikely.  If they did let you out of jail on a signature bond would the company let you go back to driving before the issue Is resolved in court?  Unlikely.

How much money did you stand to lose?  $100?  A little more?  The most cost effective thing to have done would have been to have given the bad guy(s) the money.  You are at work to make money, from a risk perspective, it's the most cost effective course of action.  All this said..............

Some number of drivers have to resist having their money forcibly taken from them.  This is necessary for the safety of ALL DRIVERS.  Was I one of those drivers?  Yes I was.  Would I be one of those drivers in the future, if someone lets me drive again?  No.  It's no longer my turn.  You are at work to make money.  The most cost effective course of action is to go back to work right away.  The cops are a dead loss of at least an hour of your time and they will make no effort to catch the guy(s) anyway, so why even tell them about it?  It's not profitable.   

Will a cab company allow their drivers to rip off passengers?

Does the company exercise much oversight over what the drivers are doing?  Usually, in my experience, the company doesn't want to know what any individual driver is doing.  If they have to know what a driver is doing, usually that driver has gotten the wrong kind of attention.  The drivers are supposed to be anonymous, running around all over the place, giving people rides.

Can the dispatchers tell you which drivers rip people off?  Yes.  Can the lower level management, the dispatchers superiors, tell you which drivers rip people off?  Sure.  Are they going to make much effort to do anything about any particular drivers behavior?  No.  If the only complaints that come in about Joe Doaks are over being over charged, Joe Doaks will probably drive for many years.  Why?  It's just a misunderstanding, and the customer is exaggerating.  Did the customer get a receipt, and did that receipt make it into the office for evaluation?  It didn't?  Of course it didn't, it doesn't exist!!

I took about 18 months off, drove a big truck, and came back to town.  The first thing that happened was another guy who'd taken off and been gone for a while forced me off the road in McFarland, and insisted I give him a delivery I had in my cab going to Stoughton.  Why?  He was going to Stoughton.  He was BEHIND me, passing me wasn't ok for him to do.  There was a regular time call coming up in Stoughton he wanted, and why shouldn't I give him $25.  We'd never met before, and it was an occasion for him to make a permanent enemy.  The point of mentioning this is, PC (his initials) was known to everybody in the company to be a rip off driver, and on this day I came to know it too.  He tipped the dispatchers every day, and that made it ok.

Bottom line?  Call and complain about a driver who tips the guy who's talking to you on the phone, and that complaint goes NO PLACE!  Call the next day during business hours, the big boss asks the guy you talked to last night about it, and the complaint goes NO PLACE.  Get the idea?

Standing your ground, defending yourself, and Eddies spin yet again

Trayvon Martin is a pretty famous name right now.  If anyone would have told him how famous he would become, a week before he died, he never would have believed it.  Like many Americans, Eddie and I discussed his death.  As usual, we didn't agree.

My best friend and I usually don't agree?  That's right.  Oddly enough, I finally discovered a subject where Eddie is much more cynical than I am.  Usually he's the shining voice of reason, but he's also human enough to have a pet peeve.

My spin on what happened to Trayvon Martin is as follows.  A moron got out of a car carrying a gun in his hand.  What are you going to do with that thing, you fool?  Get yourself in a hell of a lot of trouble!!!  If he had it to do over again, I'm sure he would have stayed in his car, as the cops suggested.  Once he got out of that car, was he totally responsible for any and all further wrong?

My best friend thinks so, I don't agree.  I forget what movie the line is out of, but I recall some Sargent telling a group of Marine recruits that, 'the worst sad sac Marine, is better than a dead hero'.  Is Martin even a hero?  No, he's generally accepted as a victim, not a hero.  A dead victim.  Did that have to happen?  I don't think so.

What do I think happened?  I think an idiot got out of his car and confronted a kid who could have torn him to shreds in an unarmed fair fight.  I think the kid reacted to seeing that weapon, the same way I react to seeing somebody brandishing a knife.  That fool won't use it.  Martin could have given him the finger, called him as many names as he wanted, then turned his back on the fool, and walked away.  If he would have done that I think he'd still be alive.

He could have gone into a rage, and told that pudgy white middle aged fool he was going to shove that gun up his................  And followed that up with trying to do just what he said he ought to do.  Then he was dead.  EVERY BODY LOST.  The kid lost, the moron lost, the community lost, America lost; we all lost.  Was the kid partially responsible?  I have to say yes.  The worst sad sac Marine is better than a dead hero, and nobody is elevating the kid to the status of hero.  He's simply a victim, and with better judgement, he could have walked away.

Sharing a cab, from the passengers perspective

You just landed in Albany, New York.  You're there to visit your son who is a sophomore at the local university, so you've been there before.  Once you're downtown, you'll meet your son for dinner, and walk to your hotel.  The problem is, when the plane lands there are only 3 cabs out there.  You and 6 other people want a ride downtown.  Do you share a cab?  Call a cab on the phone.  Patiently wait for more cabs to come to the airport?  What?

You try to get one or 2 of the other passengers together in a ride to the same destination downtown.  Then you take local cabs from the lobby of that hotel, to your actual final destinations.  It's the fastest way for everybody to get into town.  It's the cheapest way, the person who gets the receipt gets cash from the other passenger or 2.  You don't get a receipt?  You're there to visit a relative, right?  Why do you need one?  If you're the  business man, you can make it sound like you're being a real great guy, offering to share  your cab with somebody who has 2 suitcases.  It's a very easy deal to make.

Can the cab driver say no?  Not really, not if he values his job.  He can not only get fired for refusing, he can get his cab permit revoked, which is worse than fired.  You might talk the company into giving you a break, you will not talk the permitting people into reconsidering.

Should the cab driver refuse this arrangement, take a photo of his face with your phone.  Also take a photo of the number on his cab, and his license plate.  Make a note of the time.  Forward this documentation to the customer relations people at the airport.  He's looking for a new job, real fast.