After more than 12 hours on the job, the last thing I want to do is make cordial, lip service-paying conversation with the taxi uncle. My mind is shutting down, my eyes are droopy and all I want to do is switch off, but do you sense that from looking through your rear-view mirror at me? Nooooooooo.
Instead, you talk at the top of your voice, gesticulate wildly with both hands as you careen down the highway at, oh, merely 100km/h, as I stare, eyes transfixed on the wheel and the road, hoping that you don't send us crashing into the road divider mid-sentence.
You find it incredulous when I tell you what it is I am doing for a living. Hell, you point out, I'm not even wearing what I'm supposed to be wearing! Cue more unwanted eye-contact from the rear-view mirror. And you actually turn round for a split second, as if unbelieving your eyes, that a person like me, clad in the clothes I was in (which are perfectly alright), could be who I said I was. Gaaaawd. Whatevah.
Look, Mister, if I wanted to talk to you I would initiate a conversation. Please don't share your favourite Cantonese song with me, especially not when I'm just dropping off to sleep. And please, don't phrase your questions in such a way that I have no choice but to agree with you. I don't understand a single word the lady is singing, though it is a pleasant tune, and I couldn't care less if her utterances fire you up to want to earn more moolah. Really, it is your business, not mine, so can we keep it that way?
Next time, can you please just do what you were paid to do? Let me be more specific: that is, shut the bloody hell up and ferry me from point A to point B. I don't want to know your point of view on travelling to European countries versus Asian countries. No wait, scrap that, I'm not interested in your point of view, period. Also, you are obliged to carry my luggage out of the trunk for me. I don't understand why you would put it in, but not take it out, for me. So don't curse and swear when I took all of 2 minutes to take it out from your boot. Yes, I stood behind your Nissan for longer than I needed on purpose, so that you couldn't reverse and get the hell out so you could pick up your next ride, but Sir, taking my bag out of your car is part of the service you are providing. God, and to think cab prices are rising.
Ugggghhhhhhhh. What a waste of my $19.30.
2 comments:
My job requires me to take taxi literally everyday. And I think my patient for some of their nonsense is depleting and seeing the bottom soon.
Sometimes lodging an official complain is for the good of the many. And if we do make an effort in write in to compliment good services by those genuiunely good drivers.
And yes, since the fare is going up, so should the service.
4 million smiles? To foreigners only right?
Haha
Haha. You have a point, but I must say, though, that this particular specimen wasn't that rotten, lah. Just that this particular blogger was tired, and hence, easy to irritate. But yeah, there are lots worse cab drivers elsewhere - The Boyfriend once encountered a cabby who was so impatient, he revved his engine and even lurged forwards a few times while he was trying to unload his baggage from the trunk. Alas, that idiot of a man is what they call an "independent" - I think he owned the car or something, and so was not accountable to the company or something to that effect. How that can be possible evades me to this day.
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