The Other Side of Midnight (10 page)

It's got nothing to do with how much money they make, either, or how much they got in the bank. I think it comes down to ignorance. Some people got everything given to them, I guess, and never know what it's like to work for a living. The people you know who got nothing are the ones who usually do try to give you something extra. They know what it's like being out trying to make a dollar.

This elderly couple were going from the Quality Inn to Bacalao there on LeMarchant Road. It was a $7 run. I came straight across Duckworth Street, up over Barter's Hill and right on LeMarchant Road. The man said, “We didn't come this way last time. We went through Rawlin's Cross.”

“I didn't want you to have to cross the street in traffic. I wanted to let you off on the right side of the road.”

“I'm sure now,” he said. His voice and his demeanour was pretty condescending. “You just wanted a few extra dollars in your pocket.”

I tried to be polite. “No, sir. I'm not ripping you off. On a small run like this I'm not going to rip you off for twenty-odd cents. I mean, come on.”

His wife was telling him to give it up. But he kept on and kept on.

In the meantime, while he was telling his wife that he was in the right, I turned the meter off. He stopped the conversation. “Why did you turn the meter off?”

I said, “If $7 is going to be out of the way for you and your woman to have a good night out, then the ride is for free. You got me feeling bad over $7, man. Go out to dinner, and go have a good time. Don't worry about it.”

He was like, “Yes, right on!”

But his wife was good and pissed off. She gave me a $3 tip. When they walked away, she said everything to buddy: “Why do you have to do that every single time? Every single time you hassle cab drivers.”

I drove an old guy out to Petty Harbour. He had this sandy, sandpaper face. He was big, too. He was six-four, or six-five—a big old fisherman. All the way out, he was tearing me a new asshole: “Cab drivers are all a bunch of cutthroats. I suppose I got to pay forty bucks now for this run. For fuck sake, I wouldn't burn $3 in gas driving home in my truck.”

You don't usually comment too much. But I said, “You can walk, or you can get caught for impaired driving. That's six or seven grand and your licence gone.”

When he got out, I happened to look back, and I noticed that he dropped his money on the seat. It was at least three grand worth of fifties. It was a big old stack of them. I was new to the business and young. Being raised the way I was raised, I gave him back his money hoping to change his perspective on cab drivers. That would've made my day. I got out with the money, and said, “Hey, buddy. Come here, I want you.”

He turned around, and I stuck out my hand. He said, “I'm not shaking your hand, you cutthroat.”

“Look closer.”

And there was his money in my hand. He took his money and said, “You're all still a bunch of cutthroats.”

If You Want to Drive, Get Your Own Cab

Gordon, driving for eighteen years

Some customers think they can get away with anything. They get in the car and they think they own it. I remember one of the other drivers, a good buddy of mine, had someone burn cigarette holes in his back seats. The driver told the passenger he couldn't smoke in the car, and he took the plastic knobs off of the locks and twisted the steel. I had one guy reach over, drunk, and try to take control of the steering wheel. I had to hit him with an elbow in the forehead. This was a big guy, too, biceps like footballs. Going down Craigmiller Avenue, he reached over the seat and grabbed the steering wheel. There were cars on both sides of the road and children playing.

I said, “Listen, buddy, I'm driving this taxi. If you want to drive, you get your own car. I'm damn well sure that if a youngster comes out from between two cars and gets hit, your story isn't going to be the same as mine.”

Then I had another guy who, oddly enough, I picked up at a cab driver's house. It's early on a Friday night—it's not even dark out— and he's drunk. I said, “Where are you headed?”

He told me to take him to the east end of town, behind the Holiday Inn—around that way. He then reached over turned the meter off. “You don't need that on,” he said.

“As a matter of fact, I do. I got a family to feed, bud. I don't know where you get off.”

Then he turned the meter off again. He said, “You don't need that on.”

“As a matter of fact, I do. And don't touch it again.”

“Buddy, I got to make a phone call.”

I knew there was going to be a dozen stops, and I knew I probably wouldn't get paid. I brought him to the Fountain Spray on Military Road. It's a Needs Store now. I decided to just drive away and leave him there. That's the best thing to do with those kinds of guys.

Have a Nice Day, My Darling

Fitz, driving for fifteen years

I picked her up this missus at the airport, took her luggage and got her aboard. You know—common courtesy stuff. Everything went number one. I brought her down to her place, and she paid me for the job right to the penny. We're responsible to put whatever they need a hand with on their step, so I haul her bags out of the back of the car. There was no tip, or nothing. “Follow me,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“I want you to bring them upstairs for me.”

I looked at her: “Bring them upstairs for you? Do you want me to unpack them and put them back in the drawers, too?”

“Don't you get smart with me,” she said, “or I'll call and complain.”

I wasn't having that. “I hope you do. Have a nice day, my darling.”

She started in again: “I demand…”

You try to humour them and do the best you can, but sometimes you get fed up. “You demand what? For me to go upstairs and for me to take your luggage and put it in your bedroom? You're cracked, girl. What's wrong with your head?”

What it All Boils Down To

Don, driving for twenty-two years

The thing about St. John's is we're now on par with the national average of unemployment, which is five-point-something. The city is doing well. We got more people working. We got the university. We got five major hotels. There's money out there. But yet they'll be into the restaurants and into the bars and when it comes time to go home in a taxi they want a cut rate. I've seen them walk from car to car to car down Adelaide Street looking for a deal.

With me, the meter goes on—that's it.

That being said, if I give you my cell number you can phone me for a taxi. But the difference with me is I won't personalize company work. That work is for everyone. I'll take the jobs in turn. Guys used to come in off the rigs to get their checks and give me a call. There used to be four coming in one week and four the next. I drove them around, and I told them if they wanted cigarettes or booze picked up, I'd do that, too. There was always a good tip because they had a pocket full of cash. After a few weeks, one of them might say, “Don, can I owe you $20 until we get back?” That stuff didn't bother me; I was doing pretty well for myself.

Then you got customers who call three or four taxis at a time and whoever gets there first gets the job. It happens too often. But we just sit back and take it.

My last New Year's Eve was four years ago. They were out on the streets and up at the hotels. It was busy everywhere. I dropped someone off in Kilbride at quarter to four in the morning, and the dispatcher fed me another job in the same area. When I got them to Forest Road—downtown was just over the hill, seconds away— the customer said, “Did you get a call from up there? I called five or six cabs.”

“Why didn't you tell me that earlier?” I said. “I'd have left you right where you were to. Would you phone for five or six pizzas and just pay for the one that got their first?”

He didn't like that. But I didn't like what he said to me, either.

And it's mostly the younger crowd—students. I'm not saying it's always students. I'm just saying they're usually young. One time, I got sent to Burton's Pond, the university. They were in the back seat on the phone, and one of them said, “Can you cancel that cab?”

I pulled the car off the road: “Get out! Next time you won't be so smart.”

I've often had instances where another driver and I got to a house at the same time and we left them right where they were to. But you got drivers out there who don't care, as long as they can get that job. We got to stand up for ourselves. Phoning three or four taxis is not right.

It all boils down to the fact that there's no respect—you're not even looked at. You're nothing. That's the way I feel. I once watched a guy on
Good Morning America
interview a hot dog vendor on Park Avenue. You can imagine what it's like having a hot dog stand on Park Avenue. Just before the interview was over, the vendor said, “I guess other than taxi drivers we're looked down upon.”

The Nature of the Business

Doug, drove and dispatched for twenty-five years

Most cab drivers are eager to tell their stories to complete
strangers—customers—but once a microphone is turned on they generally
go quiet. But consider that many of their work-related experiences
centre on other drivers, as well as the owners, the brokers,
sometimes the police and often City Hall. There are the drivers who
rob jobs from other drivers. The inspectors who do little inspecting and
a lot less enforcing. The stand owners who put junkers on the road and
nutbars behind the wheel. Some drivers simply fear retaliation. One,
bold and brash, laughed: “It certainly wouldn't be the first time someone
got a punch in the face for mouthing off.”

I liked my job and the people I worked with, and the dispatchers got treated with respect. But, after twenty-five years, I got sick of babysitting children. Last going off, I used to come in and announce over the radio, “All right, boys. I'm here and I've only got half a case of Pablum and six pacifiers. Go easy on me.”

Drivers were removing customers from other cars and putting them in their own car because they felt they were supposed to get that particular job. Drivers were racing to get ahead of other cars and cutting them off so they could pull up in front of the house first. Drivers were calling and forever lying about where they were to. If they were quick enough to click in before the one-and-three-quarter seconds it took the other guy to respond, even if they're camped out in a line-up at one of the stands, they'd put on the reverse lights, back away and nobody would be the wiser. Drivers were going flat out down over the hill and calling their buddies on the radio to pull over, they got to ask them something, and then zooming on past them to get to a job. It got to be too much for me.

It wasn't hard to figure out someone was lying. If you just left the stand for a job, and I had your name crossed off, there was no way you were ready for another job halfway across town. There was no way you got from Adelaide Street to the Janeway, dropped off your job and were parked at Virginia Park Plaza, which was the standby stand, and were ready for another job that quick. It's impossible. I knew they were full of shit; everyone on the stand knew they were full of shit.

Our radio sets used to be closed—you could only hear the dispatcher, and you couldn't hear the other drivers. This was before cellphones. When the open microphone system was introduced it kept people honest and got rid of a lot of the garbage going out over the system. One guy—I won't name no names—was a prime example of the way things used to be. He was a poster child for screwing over the dispatchers and customers. He was an intimidator, a former drug dealer who had done a string of time and whose choice of career when he got out of jail was taxiing. Taxi intimidation, more like it. He'd cut you off on the road, or rob a job right in front of you. Shit like that. A few times he told me he was going to come down and throw me out the window for giving one of his jobs to another driver.

I guess I was starting to piss some people off.

I was calling out the bullshitters:
You just had a job and you want
another?
If one guy was a flat-out liar and the other a career driver, I knew who was telling the truth. Greed—that's what it's all about.

But that's the nature of the business.

Sky Pilots

Paul, driving and dispatching for seventeen years

You must've heard of “sky pilots.” Those are the drivers who you haven't heard from for hours, guys who won't work with the dispatcher the whole night, and all of a sudden they answer the radio at four in the morning when downtown is cleaned up and they're looking for phone work. It's like they appear out of nowhere. But you know they've been on the go the whole night. You've watched them out the window as they blow by. You'll radio into the dispatcher to let them know what they're at, cruising around and not taking jobs off the phone. Then you'll hear: “Forty-two? I hope you're listening, because you're not getting anything from me after four o'clock.”

I prefer to work with the dispatcher. If I'm in the area and he wants a car, I'll call out. I'll tell you now, I was in on Brookfield Road and the dispatcher whacked me to the Fairview Inn. You mean to tell me there were no other cars between me and the east end? You let out your dirty digs—your complaints. The dispatcher knows you're frustrated, but what can he really do about it?

When I dispatched, with that many drivers out there, when I came in at eleven-thirty, I put my foot down: “If you don't work with me now, come four o'clock in the morning you're not getting anything off the phone.” I'd say that in order to get the drivers to work with me because the company got regular customers waiting. Those same regulars are going to be there Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday when there's nothing doing. You got to try to keep them happy.