Those weird taxi drivers...

[Streets]

Originally Posted by Riksta

I agree with that.

Those people are there to do a job AND THEY CAN'T EVEN LISTEN PROPERLY when you tell them you don't want f&&&&&ing pickles. Lucky it was raining last time I went and I couldn't have been bothered parking and walking back in or that burger would have been smeared all over their counter and probably thrown at the ice cream machine to mess that one up for the night.

If you're there to do a job, you do it properly, or find something else where you don't need to listen to customers.

/end rant.

Don't know why you decided to latch on to that particular sentence and then bilge out some insane off-topic knobgrease but I gotta admit it must be good being you. What's it like having never made a mistake in your entire life?

[Fev]

Anyone else notice that not many of them can actually drive smoothly? ie It's either a foot on the brake pedal or the foots on the throttle - no coasting. It feels like being bunnyhopped at 60km/hr. I dont understand why they can't just cruise smoothly..

[Riksta]

Originally Posted by Streets

Don't know why you decided to latch on to that particular sentence and then bilge out some insane off-topic knobgrease but I gotta admit it must be good being you. What's it like having never made a mistake in your entire life?

I've made plenty of mistakes in my life. However, when it comes to JOBS where I've had to deal with CUSTOMERS, I've always sent them away happy, and not had them to return purely because I didn't listen to something they said.

And for the record, I double and triple checked with the little cretin that he'd put it through right to which he looked and said yes. Quite a different story when the burger came out with the grille slip attached stating what he'd put through.

[Mr Hardware]

nvm..

[ea90_S]

ive noticed quite alot that they most doesnt matter aussie, indian, eskimo they always drive with some sort of pulsation never ever smooth on the throttle whilst coasting..............

[Franco Cozzo]

Everyone complains about the Taxi drivers and how they go about their jobs, but when they're asked if they do their job its always "No, its too dangerous blah blah". Fire the current Taxi drivers who make mistakes and you'd probably have very few left, instead of having a horrible taxi ride, you have none at all. Though, they do some pretty crazy stuff, they seem to love the right hand lane near the entrance to Melbourne airport, then do a mass cut everyone else off to get to the entrace.

[gtxb67]

so many people complain about taxi driver's and while i am not sticking up for them, most of the people i have met do not do their job any better

imcompetence is not confined to just taxi drivers - and strangely enough, if you asked one of these weird taxi drivers to give an opinion on themselves - they would probably give themselves 5 stars. the lack of hygeine, knowledge, effort etc. would be someone elses fault. see they are just like the rest of our working class - they are just an easier target

[Dauphin]

Originally Posted by ea90_S

ive noticed quite alot that they most doesnt matter aussie, indian, eskimo they always drive with some sort of pulsation never ever smooth on the throttle whilst coasting..............

A lot of people seem to do this. It's most noticable with small Honda sports cars like Preludes and Integras where they have fitted large exhausts so you can hear exactly what the engine's doing as they go by. You can hear the driver continually adding some loud pedal, then letting it go, then adding some more, even tho there's no other car around them on a flat piece of road.

[LTDHO]

I find the taxi's in NSW worse than Vic.

All the ones hear are in of repair and have no idea how to get anywhere.

I only book the 'Silver service' now. Sure it costs more, but you get a detailed Fairlane with leather etc.. Money well spent.

[Mr Brooksy]

Ahh, the stories... all good so far from Aussie Cabbies, but Chinese Cabbies are mental! Wrong way down their freeway at over 120kmh, wrong way down cycle lanes at 40-60kmh (I dont know how they did it without killing cyclists, or smashing up the bodywork)!!! Turning left from the right hand lane (China is left hand drive for those who don’t know) while crossing 3-4 lanes of moving traffic! Squeezing between old busses that seem to want to occupy the same lane as the Cabbie, and my favourite... Doing 160kmh in a cab that was falling to bits, passing cars in and out of the marked lanes, then to top it off almost mis-judging a pass on a 3 wheel single cylinder diesel contraption that was supposed to be a truck looking thing... Oh, and also their freeways have massive potholes periodically too! YIKES!

[Spudz27]

Never had a bad taxi driver. 1 taxi drove us 5km home in 40c heat just so we didn't have to walk. No charge. Another guy gave us a lift even though the ride was only 2km but it was ****ing with rain. My only bad exp was the cab itself. One guy had a 97 EL wagon (this was last year) and it had no suspension, the seats were shredded to bits etc.

[LazyBrennan]

Me and my girl friend got into a taxi one night in Brisbane, On the way home we went over the story bridge, We were in the middle lane on the right next minute... we were on the left lane. We crossed over 2 other lanes and were about 2cm from going up the gutter onto the footpath I had to grab the wheel!!!! He was using his navigator to find where we were going and just thought he didn't need to watch the road? O.o The whole way home he was all over the road and barley spoke a bit of English. We just got out of the car half way home and walked.

[TZENU]

My interesting cab stories come from visiting abroad.

In Malaysia got a cabby that was organised by our hotel, that took us from the airport out to our hotel in KL (35km) in traffic in 15min flat... To add to that he was driving a 99 merc. As soon as we hit the highway just outside the airport he went from the left straight to the right lane and at one stage i think i saw the speedo at 150. I couldn't see because the sweat that was dripping from my forehead was steadily flowing into my eyes.. I really thought this was how the cruel world was going to take me out!!!

Hailing a cab in Hanoi, Vietnam to take us from our hotel up the road to a restaurant (have you ever tried crossing the roads there???). We get in and in the space of 4-5 city blocks we had bumped, nudged and swore at about half a dozen bike riders, cars and motorcyclists... !!!

After those rides being permanently imprinted in my memory i love our cabbies in vic!

[Phildo]

Ok, strap yourselves in people, this is probably gonna be a long one.

I'm 100% caucasian Aussie, and started driving taxis here in Perth 13 months ago. People are generally delighted to see an Aussie driver - I have instant credibility because I'm white. I rarely cop flack from people, although it helps that I'm a big fat bugger (6'1" and 120kg).

Anyway… I'm always hearing complaints from passengers about other taxi drivers. But no-one has figured out the fundamental, underlying fact:

NO-ONE ACTUALLY WANTS TO DRIVE TAXIS!

This isn't a job that everyone is lining up for.

Other professions that require a reasonable level of skill and competence generally have some sort of qualifying standard. If a state government wants to hire 500 cops then it will most likely get 4,000 applications and then it can pick out the best 500.

For jobs such as teaching, nursing, etc, a university degree is required. To get a place in the relevant university course you have to qualify with year 12 results.

To be a mechanic, boiler maker, or some other trade, you have to do a four year apprenticeship. Thus, you need to show long term commitment to the job.

Basically, for most jobs, there are more people that want to do it than there are actual positions. We have to complete for those positions, resulting in the best people getting them.

Now, let's look at taxi driving. Let's say that a capital city needs 1,000 new drivers in a particular year. But only 500 apply. Oh dear.

So, what do you do? Accept the 100 or 200 that actually have the required standards, or take the whole 500, knowing that 300 to 400 of them are going to be absolutely crap at the job?

I drive night shift here in Perth, and start at 4pm each afternoon. I work my butt off in this job because I'm 38, don't own a house or anything significant, and figure that I'd better do some serious catching up. I work around 70 to 80 hours a week, and go wherever the work is. This is one hell of a frustrating job. I came home in disgust a couple of hours ago because I only managed to get two jobs in something like three hours.

Taxi driving is very often an incredibly boring and frustrating job. Driving around the place to various locations, only to find that the passenger isn't there ****es me off endlessly. Taxi drivers as a whole aren't known as being a particularly wonderful bunch, but then again, we are treated exceptionally poorly by a lot of people, so what do you expect?

If you ever call and book a taxi, and then are not there for when it turns up, then you are an inconsiderate, selfish . No ifs, no buts, no excuses. Some poor sucker has driven to that location and you've wasted his/her time. And cost him/her lost income. And so, the people that you actually want to drive taxis (i.e. organised, professional types) give up and get into something with a more guaranteed income.

To get a taxi driver's licence in Perth costs a few dollars. When I got into it a year ago, I paid the initial $101.30 application fee. The medical check was free, thanks to a doctor that bulk bills. The IQ/psych test cost $175 and the course was $870. That takes it up to $1,146.30. Add some dollars for uniform clothing and various other things and it starts to add up. The $500 that I spent on a TomTom GO 730 GPS was my own choice, but I considered it to be absolutely necessary. There wasn't a whole lot of change out of two grand.

This year is a particularly interesting one for the taxi industry. Here's what I explain to passengers:

As mentioned earlier, fundamentally, people don't want to drive taxis. Therefore, when economic times are good, you can't get a taxi. That's when there are no drivers, because they can get jobs elsewhere. Heck, here in Perth, anytime before this year service stations were busting for staff, especially at night time. Why drive taxis when you can get a guaranteed $20-22 per hour, holiday pay, sick pay, worker's comp, superannuation, etc?

When economic times go bad, taxi driving is the fallback job. People get into it because they can't get a job elsewhere. This is great in that it puts taxis out on the road for more hours, but… the people that are driving them really, really, really don't want to be doing this job. They hate it. Ask them at service stations when they are gassing up and they'll regularly tell you how they can't wait to get a job elsewhere.

So, when you've got drivers that hate the job, they aren't going to take any pride in it. They don't care about customer satisfaction. They don't care about the state of the car they are driving. They just long to be doing something else.

It's a no-win situation. Add in that the taxi industry is so poorly handled by governments and taxi companies pretty much everywhere in Australia and it's not looking particularly wonderful for passengers. No-one seems to have figured out that the standards are crap because the drivers that have good professional standards have left because, funnily enough, they expected good professional standards from their respective governments and taxi companies.

It is amusing how everyone bags taxi drivers and the industry. But no-one bothers to wonder *WHY* there are so many crap drivers. No-one bothers to stop and think about any solutions.

Here in Perth, I am extremely popular with most of my passengers. It helps that most other drivers make me look good by default. I put a hell of a lot of effort into this job. I've got a good GPS unit, which I've also customised extensively by making my own Point of Interest (i.e. POI) categories for places that I need to find regularly. One night I actually drove to and saved the location of every single backpackers hostel in Perth and Fremantle just so that the POI category would be accurate.

It is a job of extreme highs and extreme lows. There was the guy that ran from the car a few weeks ago. He vomited on the back seat and then ran without paying… the fare was $50.40. Waiting a few hours for a car detailing place to open so that I could get the back seat cleaned properly was a wonderful time.

I still haven't called the bloke that kicked in the passenger door recently - I really need to get onto that. He actually didn't know the address for the house party that he was going to, so I insisted that he make a phone call and find out. When he called me a "f--king ripoff " a few seconds later I stopped the car and ended the hiring. He got out and kicked the door in. It will go through court and I'll probably get the money out of him, but the owner wants the car fixed ASAP. Guess who gets to cough up the $1,000 or so for that? Yep, moi.

I'm still ****ed off at the hotel that made a formal complaint about me because I gave up waiting for their passenger after eight minutes. Yep, I sat in their driveway for eight minutes, doing nothing at prime time on a Friday afternoon (missing out on other jobs). I even rang the call centre supervisor to ask how long I was required to wait for. He responded by cancelling the job, making me free to move on. But, I later had to respond to the complaint.

One lady made a formal complaint about me because I told her off for giving her child a biscuit in the car. I had only vacuumed a matter of hours earlier and the combination of a child's human saliva and a dry biscuit didn't appeal to me. I got told by the moron at the taxi company that "I could have handled it better". Hang on, let's not worry that she compromised the hygiene of the taxi, let's not worry about the businessman in his $2,000 suit who's going to sit there on the next job, instead let's worry about not hurting the fragile ego of someone who can't wait five minutes until she gets home to give the kid a biscuit.

To drive taxis you have to be quite a masochist. Being thick skinned and determined isn't enough, you've got to be very, very stubborn. The phrase, "One Powerball…" is regularly muttered in my taxi.

Personally, I would VERY much love to see the required standards increase by a lot. The result will be a massive shortage of taxi drivers, and I'll start to make a decent hourly rate. If only...

[MO]

@Phildo,well said.

[Coogs289]

Originally Posted by MO

@Phildo,well said.

+1

Cheers, Anthony

[balthazarr]

Originally Posted by Nappa

Its not uncommon for the more devout muslims to take the time, no matter what they are doing to pray. However i have used taxi's in many Islamic countries and never had that happen.

Haven't taken many cabs in Aus... most of my stories are from OS.

I used to work as a telecomms engineer and would travel quite a bit - often to less desirable (ie. third world countries). Fortunately, I've never had to get a cab in Sudan, Nigeria or similar places as my employer would assign a local employee as a guide/driver.

I've also been to quite a few muslim countries - some of them quite a bit less liberal than we're all used to. Apparently sharia law allows an exemption from full prayer (facing Mecca, etc.) if you are driving... I was told that the roads get quite congested a few minutes before each call to prayer, and it's true.

The best cab ride ever? Has to be on the German Autobahn... cabbie sitting on ~220km/h, still being passed, of course.

The weirdest? Brisbane, Australia.

I don't remember the details, but there were three of us trying to get back to our hotel after a long day at work (18 hours - bloody deadlines). I sat in the back, and noticed that the whole cab was decked out in fairy/christmas lights, and there was a mirror ball hanging from the rear vision mirror. :

We get in and the driver takes off. At first, it all seemed normal (apart from the lights/mirror ball), the driver was very chatty and excitable. I don't remember what was said, but whatever it was seemed to trigger him off...

He fired up the car stereo - again, don't remember the song... some bubble gum pop - and cranked it up. LOUD. And then the whole cab lit up like a Christmas tree... the driver was clearly loving it - we were trying to melt into the seats.

The real kicker? The lights started blinking in rough time to the music... I thought that it was odd that he would go to the trouble of installing some sort of device to blink the lights in time to the music (although by this point, 'odd' didn't seem a bad description of the driver). Well, it turns out that he hadn't installed anything... I noticed that he was pulling out the power cord to his lighting from the cigarette lighter and pushing it back in again... :

[Mr Hardware]

Wow, Phildo, well said. You're 100% correct mate. The public are utter turds to cabbies.

[Nappa]

took a taxi/hired car from agra to delhi in india. its a 5hour drive. spent about 2 hrs racing down the fwy at about 120, on the wrong side of the divided road.
Traffic was backed up our side so he decided to cross the median strip over to the other side and just headed towards the oncomming traffic.
It was a bit scary but with plenty of horn beeping people just moved out of our way.