A.S.M.

When driving a taxi in a money town, you see the difference between those and actual communities.  By a money town, I mean where there has been explosive growth due to economic activity and where those who have moved in vastly outnumber those people who were born there.  I don’t blame the new-comers for all the problems because the long-time residents play their part in the money stupidity too.

My time is worth more than yours is! – This money town attitude presents itself in bank lines, busy restaurants, parking lots and in traffic.  I’ve personally watched as many near collisions at the entrance to coffee drive-through line-up, as I have at intersections.  My time is worth more than yours, so I have to get my vehicle in front of yours.  On the streets my time is also worth much more than yours is: therefore I can’t let you merge into my traffic lane in front of me.  I see this attitude all day long and it isn’t just aimed at taxicabs.  Actually, it isn’t effective against a taxi because I’ll get into the gap between your front bumper and the car in front of you – whether the space is big enough or not.

Maverick Money’s NEW cell phone system is the BOMB!

It takes more than Money

If you need help, go to the bikers: only go to the police if you want to buy drugs. The street drug and property crimes in a money town are porportionally larger than in established cities.  The pay checks the workers get are larger than they are used to where they used to live.  That leaves more money for attractive items to show off in vehicles and plenty for recreational drugs.  However, the pay scale for the police officers is the same as the national averages.  So for policemen to benefit from being in the money town, where things are also more expensive, they need to supplement their inclomes with graft money and shakedowns.   “I had a small bag of weed and $300 in my possession when the police frisked me for no reason.  They took the drugs and the money but didn’t charge me.  Had they arrested me, they would’ve had to turn in the booty for evidence.”  (That was not me speaking: I don’t do drugs and seldom have that much cash.)

“Buddy,” I say as I get into a friend’s taxi for a visit while in a slow period, “your supposedly ‘non-smoking’ taxi smells like an overloaded ashtray.”

“Smoking in my cab is illegal and the Nazi F**king Police would write me a huge ticket for it.”

“Yah right,” I laugh, “You must smoke about two packs a day in here.”

“I don’t smoke any in here.” He protested. “The f**king Nazi law says I have to have this non-smoking sticker on my window or I can’t get a f**king taxi permit. So instead of sitting inside my cab and blowing my smoke out the window, I stand outside smoking and I blow all my smoke back into the cab through a cracked open window. That way I’m not breaking the Nazi’s f**king law but I’m giving the non-smokers who elected the f**king Nazi government a good strong whiff of my anti-Nazi opinion. Smokers that get into my cab appreciate my allowing them to light-up as long as they pay the smoking fine if we get one.”

Click Here To Kick The Smoking Habit

This cab driver makes some very good points. All taxi cabs here are forced by law to have a non-smoking sticker, yet some cab drivers DO smoke, whether inside or outside as my friend does. So instead of protecting non-smokers from smoke, the law just gives a false impression of all cabs being ‘non-smoking’ ones.  A practical way to protect non-smokers would be to forbid a cab from having a ‘non-smoking’ sticker on a vehicle where the driver does smoke. Conversely, it would also allow a smoker to choose a smoking cab if that is what they want.  But that common sense approach doesn’t net the greedy government any extra ticket revenue and we all know that it’s all ONLY about the money anyways.

My friend called it a f**king Nazi law, but in fact it is a STUPID f**king Nazi law.

While waiting for my aircard to be set up, I used to park my taxi near a hotel so I could piggyback on an open wireless network while wait for taxi call.  But this skin-flint hotel management took offense, even when I stopped off of their property.  I would get rude messages relayed through my dispatcher.  ‘Our open wireless is free for our customers only!’  Then stop the signals from getting off your property line – if you can.

My point here is ‘Big Whoop!’  So I used their precious signal for awhile without renting a room.  I also will go to a toilet in a restaurant without stopping for lunch – even when there is a big placard that says ‘Washrooms are for customers only’, as if a one extra toilet flush of water costs them anything extra.

Yar! Take the Treasure or Walk the Plank!

Then today, I happened to park near this particular hotel, and I now do have my own internet access, but still I got the nasty message relayed through my dispatcher.  So fine.  I’ll move away and I start giving my negative advice for anyone seeking a room for the night.  I’m a cab driver and I drive many people from the airport or bus who are looking for a room.  Skin-flint business practices are disgustingly cheap and they cost the skin-flint more in the longer term.  For example, I’ll never buy any food from a place that has a ‘toilet for customers only’.  If they are too cheap to spend water on a few extra toilet flushes, are they scimping on kitchen cleaning supplies too? This was just a small rant about disgustingly skin flint business practices: I hope U enjoyed it.

Give a hoot, or maybe a honk for Drivrr.  He’s the newest blogger here at ASM.  Drivrr is a taxi driver and he will post the ‘secrets’ that people tell him in the privacy his cab.

Passengers suppose they can tell a taxi driver anything.  We are just anonymous ears that hear without ever telling.  But I never promiced that I wouldn’t spill my guts about them on the internet.  Well, I won’t use their real names — even if I actually know who they really are.  To a taxi driver, most people are just anonymous strangers too.