Yes, Mr Crackhead,
I know that you're rattling.
I know that you're desperate,
But there are other things happening.
This cubicle is occupied,
And I'm trying to shit.
And as soon as I'm finished,
I'll be out in a bit.
I'd be much quicker you see,
But I have to implore:
That you stop knocking and shouting,
Through this clearly locked door.
I keep reading/hearing about this problem.
I’m one of the few taxi drivers that didn’t take up the offer of free HGV Class I training offered a couple of years ago (had to have appendix out, long story).
So I stayed.
But it’s true, the calibre of work has gone right down the pan these last few years. I’m lucky enough not to get abusive passengers (touch wood) but runners and pukers and generally not feeling safe with who I pick up is definitely making me reconsider working nights these days.
In my opinion, people these days are just angry and entitled. Lockdown has been years of being told what we can’t do, and where we can’t go, and we’ve had enough.
So I get it. I get why.
But it’s a vicious circle. If people are assholes, then taxi drivers don’t want to work at night. And if there aren’t enough taxis, people get angry and competitive.
Things won’t be like this forever, I’m sure.
Slows down to let two women get by in Joiners Alley.
They try to get me to pick them up but I am private hire and I’m on my way to pick somebody else up.
Some debate ensues where I continually refuse to pick them up.
They end by shouting “Well if we get raped, it’s on you!!”
Quick as a flash I reply “Don’t flatter yourself, love!”
What horrible bastards people have become, myself included, probably 🤷
I had a young man in my taxi over the weekend. I would usually refer to a young man as a gentleman, but he was not.
I immediately got the impression that he was quite unpleasant and rude, from the way he slouched into the taxi, simply barking out the part of town he wanted to go to without a please or thank you, and how he immediately started eating his kebab in the backseat without even asking my permission. Simply put, he was a horrible dickhead.
When we got to where he lived, he paid the exact fare, not a penny more, not a penny less, and slouched off to his house. Incidentally I never expect a tip, so I expect this was just par for the course for the individual in the back of my car.
I was quite relieved that the journey was over as you can imagine.
As he walked away I casually looked over my left shoulder and spotted the mayonnaise drizzled blue takeaway fork on the back seat. Once again, it was no surprise to see it there.
As this was my last job and I was heading to ASDA to do a bit of shopping before I went home, I just drove off with the blue fork on the backseat. I would dispose of it when I got there.
When I got to ASDA I opened the back door to remove the blue fork, and was fairly unsurprised to see the abandoned kebab on the floor beneath where my passenger had been sitting.
Muttering something under my breath expressing my opinion of my passenger, I closed the kebab box and removed it from the floor of my taxi.
It was at this point that I noticed a long, flat, oil stained, brown paper bag beneath where the kebab box had formerly been.
I observed that the paper bag was quite warm so I slid the contents out to discover a couple of rather gorgeous looking onion bhajis nestled in a polystyrene tray.
Rejoicing in the positive turnaround of events, I climbed back into the front seat of the taxi with the onion bhajis, with the intention of enjoying the fuck out of them.
The first onion bhaji went down a storm. Crispy and warm with just the right amount of internal moistness with a feathery texture, I was feeling quite pleased with myself.
Raising the second onion bhaji to my mouth I noticed that it looked a little different to the first one, with a slightly different colour nearer to light brown than gold, with a marginally different surface texture. Perhaps it was a different type of onion bhaji?
As I bit down I noticed how softer the second onion bhaji was. Around the same time, my tongue informed me that I had bitten into the surface of the sun, taste wise.
The second onion bhaji was fucking HOT. Like a vindaloo or a phal curry.
After drinking a litre and a half of pop to extinguish the inferno in my mouth I disposed of the second kebab rather than attempting to eat it.
I can only conclude that my passenger had similarly pissed off the people in the kebab shop, so they left him a little present, in the form of a “modified” onion bhaji. Modified with the hottest curry paste on Earth.
Before I disposed of the onion bhaji I broke it in half to discover that there was quite a lot of brown curry paste mixed in with the ingredients.
Unfortunately due to the level of alcohol he’d probably consumed he had forgotten about his onion bhajis so the karma that was headed his way ended up in my mouth.
But that first onion bhaji was fit.
I picked up two gentlemen from a rock pub in Morecambe. One of them was quite sober (Mr S) and chatty, the other it quickly became apparent, was utterly and completely wasted (Mr W).
I could tell Mr W was in quite a state because the only conversation his comparatively sober friend was getting from him were grunts, burps, and the odd random – “GARGGHH!”
Mr S got dropped off first, paid his contribution up to that point (£6) and left me in the scintillating company of Mr I.M. Wasted, Esquire as we continued our journey to Lancaster.
During the journey, Mr W achieved the following goals:
We finally arrived at our destination, a street of lovely old houses facing Lancaster Castle (which I have yet to visit.)
The fare had advanced another £13 so I woke up Mr W, and thus began the debacle of trying to get him to pay his fare.
He looked in both of his wallets (I could only see one wallet,) fished out his debit card and I passed over my card reader (as he did not have contactless payment.)
On the screen of my phone I could see that his PIN consisted of 7, 5, 3 and 9 digits, until he finally keyed in the correct 4 digit PIN, and his card was declined. I wasn’t frustrated at all, honestly.
The nearest ATM was the Spar on The Marsh, which is about a mile downhill from The Castle.
As you can see, the ATM is on the left. There are bollards, a bin, and left of the ATM is a drainpipe.
Mr W put his card in the machine, tripped on the bollard to the left of him, and managed to wedge himself next to the drainpipe. I imagine he looked a bit like this:
That’s right, my friends, once wedged in, he had a little nap. I reversed my car a little so I could watch the ATM give up waiting for his PIN, and swallow his card.
Finally he awoke, flipped out his willy and started messily pissing into the corner.
At this point I’m afraid I had run out of patience.
So I left him. I cut my losses and drove off. He was too busy pissing to notice. I imagined him attempting to drunkenly climb the various steep gradients during his walk home. Maybe fall asleep in a garden. Get pissed on by a dog.
Half an hour later the guilt started to kick in about leaving him stranded, and that Karma would pay me a visit at some point.
My next passenger was really lovely and gave me a £15 tip.
Car on its roof in the winter conditions.
So I got a job to Galgate about 4am this morning. It was -3° outside.
The back lane was pale, glittering and deadly so I kept my speed down.
Hurtling up behind me in my rear-view came another taxi. He had a car full of passengers as well. He started flashing me to hurry up.
I mean – WTF?!
The female passenger sat behind me becomes enraged so subsequently sticks her head out of the window – presumably her head instantly froze like a Birdseye cauliflower floret, due to windchill – and shouted several things at the ‘professional driver’ behind me pertaining to the poor quality of his driving. Or words to that effect.
As we coincidentally stopped at the same place in Galgate she got out of the car and continued to berate the driver. She then got back in the car (as she wanted to continue the journey to Skerton for cigs then onwards to Marsh)
Apparently the driver said to her “He can’t be a proper taxi driver going that slowly.”
So. One of us got a fare scraping the coat-tails of £30, and one of us is a fucking arsehole that is probably going to end up roof-down, with his passengers on board, in a ditch.
The Dave Price Blog 