Recession Taxi

My spiritual journey–from the oppressive daily rhythm of job applications and rejections to commander of the USS Windstar 875–began where so many other life-alerting transitions do in America.

On craigslist!

Men and Women, heres your opportunity to get yourself going in the right direction.If you are over 21 years old with an valid Illinois driver license and a decent mvr(court purpose) then we need you. Be your own boss,pay yourself daily or weekly its your choice.We welcomeall,taxi/limodrivers,messengers,truckers,consultants,computer techs,construction ,it does not matter what type of work you have done in the past

–Craigslist, August 17, 2009

Training to drive a cab does not actually begin inside a cab itself.

First, you have to go to dispatch, the faux 70s medical building with cigarettes galore and more characters than the bar at Mos Eisley Spaceport. Driver resources is the very last door on the left, all the way at the end of the building.

I handed my paperwork to a tall bald guy, a nine-year, taxi-driving veteran. He looked over my driving record, a sheet of paper so white and so clean that he seemed shocked and suggested I might want to get a few speeding tickets on there. My training, he told me, would begin with a two-hour instructional video.

Sweet Jesus.

He led me over to a table and sat me in front of a small, outdated Magnavox television. He picked up the remote, pointed it at the set and pushed a button.  And onto the screen, straight from the faraway land of the betamax tape, came a training video. We’re talking bad cable-access television here.

A short opening section covering the customer service basics (the customer is always right, always greet the customer, have a clean taxi) quickly gave way to a longer series of scenes demonstrating what NOT to do.

In one, an overweight driver stumbled into the bathroom early in the morning to get ready for work, looked in the mirror, then bypassed a container of Listerine for a bottle of Miller High Life, sitting next to the sink. The man blew off a shower and pulled a ratty sweatshirt out of pile of dirty laundry on his bedroom floor. “DON’T BE THIS GUY!!” flashed on the screen, as the driver shoveled handfuls of cornflakes into his mouth and washed them down with more Miller High Life.

“WHASSUP!!!” The guy yelled into his cell phone in another scene, as he weaved in and out of heavy expressway traffic at 80MPH. The customer in the back looked frightened and asked the driver to get off the phone. The driver yelled that he’d be done in a minute and went right on talking. “THIS IS REALLY BAD!!” flashed on the screen. The scene ended with the customer threatening to report the driver to dispatch.

After the movie, the driver resources guy gave me the number of a cabbie who was supposed to train me for two days, out on the road. But when I called him to set something up, he was having brake trouble. “My friend,” Bass said repeatedly into the phone, as he apologized and asked to reschedule our first ride-a-long. We agreed to meet on a Tuesday morning at a hotel in the Chicago suburbs.

I showed up at a little after 8:00 AM with my white taxi manual and waited on a bench. A bunch of cabs sat in a queue across the street. But no taxi number 64 and no Bass. A few minutes went by before my cell phone finally rang. Bass was ten feet away and waking straight towards me. He had broad shoulders, a salt-and-pepper crew cut and dark olive skin. He’s Assyrian, spent most of his life in Baghdad and speaks English with a thick accent. We shook hands and then Bass led me over to a bunch of other cabbies, who stopped talking and stared as we walked up.

“In this job, you must be lucky!”

“What time you think I get up this morning?” (3:00 AM)

“How much you think I make?”

“How much you think I make yesterday?”

A stout, fireplug of a driver brought his index finger and thumb together in the shape of a zero.

Great.