August 27th, 2008
“Son of a bitch, you’re running up the meter!”27 comments
August 20th, 2008
"Hey bro, remember me? You wrote that story about me in the paper."3 comments
August 13th, 2008
“It’s the Californians, man, the Californians are the worst.”15 comments
August 6th, 2008
The middle-aged man I picked up at Vendetta is in a hyperactively verbose lather ...0 comments
July 23rd, 2008
When I step into the obese old woman's apartment5 comments
July 16th, 2008
The obese old woman at Fred Meyer has a bad hip and a wheelchair...8 comments
July 9th, 2008
“...I need to take a shower first and wash all of this blood off.”6 comments
July 2nd, 2008
“So I’ve got these two women in the back of my cab who just refuse to get out...”8 comments
June 25th, 2008
“My friend’s getting divorced, and he’s really drunk,” says the bartender...8 comments
June 18th, 2008
There’s nothing like a good Friday night, and I’m referring to the money.3 comments
[September 21st, 2005] Ask a cab driver to wait for you with the meter running when it's busy, and they'll get antsy. You make more money rolling than you can on the clock. But when it's slow, that's another matter entirely.
A fleet message is going out on this totally dead evening, asking for a volunteer to earn waiting time for Kaiser. I'm dialing before the message is finished. The dispatcher does his best radio-announcer voice: "Congratulations, you are the first caller!" He tells me to go to Kaiser Interstate lab and run its deliveries out to Kaiser Sunnyside in Clackamas as needed, with our $30-per-hour wait time in effect when I'm not driving.
This is odd, as Kaiser has its own couriers, calling us only when there's overflow. When I get there, I find out what happened. One of the machines they use for testing is down. Normal turnaround time from Sunnyside is two hours. If someone is having a heart attack in the emergency room, two hours is far too long to wait for blood-chemistry results. I'm there to ensure this doesn't happen.
Story continues belowadvertisement
The first hour, I run out to Clackamas twice. The rest of the time, I'm glad I always bring something to read in the cab. I could go on about the virtue of certain British music magazines over ours-no ads, no coverage of Britney and her ilk, much coverage of fringe artists and genres, thoughtful writing. I read MOJO and Uncut for about three hours, earning $100. Tough old life, this.
RECENT COMMENTS ON “Ask a cab driver to wait for you”
Ask a cab driver to wait for youI drive a cab in Iowa City, and I go through issue after issue of Mojo and Uncut myself on slow nights and waits. I read two US music mags, Magnet and Spin. Sp...
