Alright,
I really should not be doing this; but I am writing this at
work. Mainly because
I got the urge to write about this
right now! and if I don't, I know I will forget about it, and have nothing to node later. (well,
that's a lie, I have something in mind for when I get home....but....)
This weekend, I took my boyfriend to a
gig. (
The Smalls to any of you who are versed with small town bands, '
The Smalls' being one from
Edmonton,
Alberta Canada). The show was great, the people were great, and it was all in all a very good evening. Up untill the end.
I am beginning to wonder about the
Taxi services as a whole after
Saturday night. (
October 20, 2001) At about 2:45am we had called a taxi, as we were tired and wanted to go home. Now I will give leeway for the fact that it was
bar rush.
Now,
bar rush usually makes the wait about 30 mins. This is alright in the long run, unless you hit
brick walls at every turn. The
dispatch center asks for your name upon calling, so they know who they are sending the taxi for. Well, scratch that name thing off of the list, because it is useless. We were waiting outside, in the cold for over an hour, because it was a stampeed for these things as they pulled into the parking lot. Hell people were even
running into the streets to catch one of those taxi's! (Which I admit, we ended up doing in the end out of frustration)
Now, if things were not bad enough, after we had actually hopped into a
taxi in the second lane of a 4 lane street and started on our way home, the cab driver got a phone call from another
taxi. This is all fine and dandy, untill he asks my boyfriend if he's any good at fighting.
What the hell kind of question is that?! Well it turns out, there was this kid (going home from the same show as us, ironically enough) who couldent have been more than 20 years old tops trying to jip the driver out of his fare, and the driver was affraid this kid was going to beat him up!! Well low and behold the driver calls all the taxi's, and within a matter of 5 mins (and the taxi's did not care if they had passengers or not, because we ended up going on this little 'trip') there is 12 of them, all on the corner of this street, surrounding this kid like a police shoot out. I mean common, I did not order a drive home and a show, I just wanted to go home damnit. I wanted to sleep. Was that too much to ask for? Aparentlty so.
Well, in the end, the kid payed the fair, though he was unhappy (because he was in the taxi with his friends, and they ditched him, leaving him with the tab....nice friends huh?) and we finally got to go home, and to sleep.
The moral of this story? I am not sure if there is one.
My point? Well that one is simple. If these
taxi drivers are suppost to be working for us, providing us with a service, I expect it to be prompt, friendly and effective. Not slow, rude and annoying.
I am getting my
licence and buying a
car. I guess the saying is true, '
If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.'