March 31, 2009

March 21, 2009 – Our Deadbeat Mechanic

          A while back Jefferson leant our mechanic Stanley $200 so that he wouldn’t be roughed up by what appeared to be a few angry bookies.  Stanley didn’t go into details, but admitted that he owed money and the person who leant it wasn’t happy.



            Jefferson was fortunate enough to reclaim $100 of his money, but that appears to be the last of it.  Perhaps Stanley needs to sell more weed out of the back shop, or perhaps that’s what got him into this mess in the first place.  He seems to have a pretty cozy racket selling stolen gas from the taxi’s that are brought into the shop – at the drivers expense of course.  

March 27, 2009

March 27, 2009 – A Gentleman’s Agreement

            A few days ago I found myself having to race back into Cortez after dropping off my last fare.  Drivers are giving calls in the order that they dropped off their passenger and returned to Cortez.  Upon arrival back into town you are put back into the call rotation.

            In this case, another driver and myself had dropped off a large group of passengers downtown.  I arrived first and dropped my passengers off.  The other driver, Andrzej, had dropped off his passengers a few minutes later.  As I am approaching Cortez in anticipation of letting the dispatcher know that I will again be available for calls I see Andrzej suddenly dart past me on the freeway.  As drivers, we have an informal agreement, a gentleman’s agreement if you will, that we will respect each other’s position in traffic when returning from a call.  Normally I just let it slide but this time I sped up and passed him.  As I looked at my speedometer I noticed that I was going 85mph.  I said the hell with it and let him pass.  If he wants it that bad, so be it.

            Well, today Catherine called me in her normal passive aggressive manner to ask me about the incident.  It turns out that a fellow motorist had called in to complain.  I denied if of course.  It’s really odd how Catherine’s mind works. 

            Whatever it is, if it can’t be unequivocally proven she feels that she has to give you (in the case that you are being accused) the benefit of the doubt.  Conversely, if you can’t prove without a doubt that her mechanic is stealing gas out of your taxi for example - she will side with him.  Even if your taxi goes in with a full tank and comes out with a third of a tank and Stanley (the mechanic) is the only one who had driven it.  I don’t see how that might happen while getting the brake pads replaced.  This has led to a bit of frustration for Catherine as well.  Many of the drivers have neglected bringing the cars to shop for break service because they are tired of having their gas stolen.  One night I looked at my brakes and they were glowing red.  They still had a few rides in them.

            Also, I heard an odd piece of wisdom out of Kirk, or Sling Blade as we call him.


"Kirk"

            Marty: What are you doing Kirk?
            Kirk: We can do it, Catherine says so.
            Marty: We’re all waiting outside the hotel for calls Kirk.  We have a gentleman’s agreement.
            Kirk: There’s no gentlemen in the cab racket.

            For once, he may be right with this one.

March 17, 2009

March 17, 2009 – Tough Times

        Times have been tough for Catherine lately.  Since it has been slower and the lease money hasn’t been coming in at the rate that Catherine had hoped she has been bringing back drivers that she fired out of desperation.  I really don’t have anything more to say about that – except that it sure is a strange business model.  I'm not quite sure where she came up with it.  My guess is that it either came from a fortune cookie or at the bottom of a box of cereal.


Below is the image that I used to make my fortune cookie parody above.  Unfortunately, Catherine didn't crack open this one.  It would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.



March 2, 2009

March 2, 2009 – Why Didn’t You Check Your Tierods?

           Dennis had a minor mishap in his taxi van the other day.  Oh yes, we have vans as well – big Chevy Astro’s that are 15 years old.  As he was driving there was a sudden loss of control and the steering went out of whack.  The van had encountered a broken tie rod.  This seemed to be a somewhat routine malfunction on a vehicle with hundreds of thousands of miles.  However, Catherine didn’t seem to think so.  She questioned as to why Dennis wasn’t checking his tie rods along with the routine of checking the cab (which admittedly very few drivers do) at the beginning of his shift.  Checking the tierods?

            I’ll tell you what doesn’t seem to be a problem though.  That Dennis drives around drunk during his shift, as Randy does, and reaches a level of inebriation so great that he can’t find his way back to Cortez and always refers to himself as “we.”  That, well that’s ok…