Syrup

Last Saturday, a little before eight in the evening, I turned off a main road into a housing estate. The air was heavy with late summer torpor although it was cool inside the Cadillac six-passenger. My first job was to find the number of the house from which I was to collect my customers for the night.

As I rounded the corner a group of three girls waved me down. They were, I don't know, about nine years old. In bathing costumes and tee-shirts, they were clearly free to roam the neighbourhood. In this age of over-protective parents, it was heartening to see kids playing free, learning like they are supposed to, by being in the (reasonably controlled) local world.

I stopped and lowered the window.

Is there anyone famous on board? they asked, breathless with imagination.

Well, no. I'm just on the way to pick up my customers, I answered, playing it straight.

Are they famous?

Everyone I drive around thinks they're famous, I said.

I put the beast in Park and showed them the interior of the limo.

The house was a quarter of a mile away, and they followed me there, running along the footpath. I introduced myself to the gentleman who met me in the driveway, as he explained that the night was a surprise birthday gift for his wife and two of her friends. (Wouldn't it have been nice had The Boss told me this beforehand?)

The girls hung around while I waited, idling on the street. We chatted. I told them the deal, that the famous lady about to come out of the house was celebrating her birthday. And you know what they did? When she emerged, the neighbourhood smurfs sang her 'Happy Birthday'.

I don't think I've stopped smiling yet.






Buick photo from here [link]

Customer Appreciation

Snafugirl was right, my Canadian lady's flexibility proved to be very important that day.

When I realized my careless mistake (by reversing the order of an airport transfer, told here) my reaction was to ring a driver mate. I asked him to check on the arrival time of the flight from Toronto, hoping that it was an hour late.

Too much to ask for?

Yep. The flight was early. Drat. At this point I'm on my way to Tampa airport.

Next, I tried the customer's number. For whatever reason, the call didn't work, not even diverting to voicemail. Damn. Nothing for it but to call The Boss.

Remarkably, he didn't launch. The rocket sat on the pad without the motors igniting. I gave him my estimated time of arrival at the airport, and suggested that he might like to call another company with cars closer. Nope. He wanted to salvage the situation.

After a few minutes he called back. The customer was at the airport, and was planning to have coffee while she waited for me. Foot to the floor time.

The Lincoln Towncar is a large automobile with a large engine, but it's not exactly a racer. In a straight line, however, on a nice smooth highway, she can move. Let's just say that I averaged somewhere in the hot-day Fahrenheit numbers that day, breaking my record as a chauffeur for the distance.

I attempted to call the customer with about five minutes to run, and this time she answered. Just the tiniest, almost unnoticeable hint of annoyance came through in her voice. A few minutes later, I spied her curbside and she was in the car and we were on our way. Elapsed time from recognition of mistake: 43 minutes.

Gratitude for her philosophic nature doesn't cover my emotion. Super grateful? She was damned gracious, with that valuable intellectual foothold: people make mistakes.

And after all that, she still insisted on tipping me. Amazing.

Reverse Order

The driving gig gets to be boringly routine after a while. The boss calls around six in the evening with whatever he has for the next day. (No courtesy call if there's nothing, of course.)

As soon as he's finished talking, I work out how to fit my life around the driving jobs with which he's blessed me. The important bookend parameters are when I have to leave my place to pick up one of his cars, and when I'll be done.

Early in the summer His Highness provided me with a Tampa airport job. The customer was a regular, a lady who has a house locally the family use to escape Torontonian winters. She's the ideal client; happy, flexible, interesting, easy to chat to...and she's a generous (and, importantly, genuinely grateful) tipper.

A noon-time job like this one is always frustrating. From my place to collect the car, to her house, the drive to Tampa, the return, ten minutes to refuel, drop the car, back home adds up to three and one-half to four hours - the better part of a half a working day. If The Boss could attract sufficient business so we could string three or four or more together, that would be great. It would significantly up hour average hourly pay rate.

I'll stop dreaming now.

My thoughts were on anything but the job - I had things I was working on, people I wanted to call, stuff to do. Can you guess what I did?

Thinking.

Thinking.

Like a dope, my mind was stuck on the idea that I was picking her up from her house, and driving her to the airport. In fact, she was flying into Florida that day and wanted me to take her to her house.

Can you guess when I realized it? Yep, just as I approached her neighbourhood. I was the standard fifteen minutes early for the noted time...but that time was for the arrival of her Air Canada flight into an airport sixty-three miles away.

Man. Oh, man.

All my fault, all my own doing, all my own failure to concentrate.

How We Roll

The idea is simple. You tell The Boss what time you'd like a pick-up, I arrive ten to fifteen minutes earlier than that time and wait in your driveway. If I'm late or there's a problem, you will receive a phone call; if you don't receive a phone call, you can expect that I'll be waiting at the address provided, at the time stipulated.

Moreover, all the drivers I know are smart people. If we're at your house at 5:05 am for a 5:15 am pickup, we won't ring the doorbell. I have no clue as to how your household's constituted - who sleeps late, who rises early, whether there are children, whether your wife got up at 4:00 am to cook you pancakes.

All of that is unknown to me, so it seems logical to use a fall-back idea, which is that no-one wants their door-bell rung before the sun's up.

That, sir, is how we roll.

Next time, instead of phoning The Boss to complain that your airport ride isn't there, do something more logical. Open your front door, or open your garage door and

SURPRISE

look at the nicely dressed man with the shiny Lincoln waiting for you.



'55 Thunderbird from here [link]

August Blues

It's Thursday and the only job this week was my eavesdropping sortie early Monday morning. When I started contracting my services to the Boss three years ago, he had ten drivers on the roster, seven of whom were full-time equivalent. Now we are three and a half drivers, sharing what amounts to work for one.

We are contractors because Boss man is allergic to full-time jobs. They create Social Security and payroll tax obligations, and obligations don't sit well with him. So we drivers are all self-employed, or, as I like to call us, minimum wage contractors. What the IRS does to us would be banned under Geneva Treaty protocols, but it is what it is.

The flip side of that coin is that The Boss would be out of business right about now if he had full-timers. Every facet of the business is down, from the airport transfers to drunken party nights. Granted, we live in a small market, but it's a wealthy community that has become averse to spending. Here on the Gulf Coast of Florida everyone's confidence was based for decades on rising real estate prices. When that bubble burst, a lot of well-paid jobs went with it, and as the economy goes, so goes the limo business, only more so.

As ever, necessity is the mother of invention. There is no making a decent living driving, and unlikely to be one for the forseeable future, so everyone has to adapt. That's how I'm spending all my time lately, working a couple of different plans, happy to take the crumbs when The Boss offers them.




Benz roadster from here [link]

Let's Go Drop Some Eaves.

Eavesdropping is rude, and I do my best not to listen. But what is a working driver to do when people insist on using the phone within earshot? Towncars aren't equipped with a compartment divider like the stretched limos, so as much as I try to tune out, it's sometimes beyond me.

The secret is that customer phone calls often keep me awake. Even our airport trips are at least an hour one-way, so accidentally overheard private conversations alleviate the hypnotic effect of the freeway. It's a safety enhancer, right?

This morning's job is a case in point. The 4:30 am pickup was in a nice gated community, the likes of which Florida is infested - fancy golf-course, large lots, big houses, families. I know this family; thankfully they're normal.

Except this morning. When the front door finally opened at 4:45 am, I heard raised voices. An argument? Before sunup? Who has the energy?

One of the daughters was returning to college. Her mother was at her, talking overly loudly, clearly agitated. The father looked harried, still half asleep, appearing to need a stiff drink.

With the usual "Oh, I forgot my....." rush back inside, we left at 4:55, to the sound of Miss texting furiously in the back seat. Interesting, I thought, to whom is she texting at that time? Not her college room-mate, I'd guess.

After about ten minutes, she called her mother, and here's what I learned from the conversation over the next forty minutes:

- she attended college in a distant state
- she'd acquired a boyfriend eight months ago, of whom the parents disapproved
- parents had predicted it would end badly
- this last weekend, parents flew to see daughter
- they didn't tell her they were coming
- they arrived on her doorstep with the intention of having her ditch the b/f
- that didn't go so well
- the three of them returned to Florida
- it was a tense weekend
- the parents wanted to tell the b/f directly he was no longer welcome to date their daughter
- daughter thought this was an over-reaction
- daughter wanted to break-up her own way
- parents weren't convinced
- daughter now tired of parents "controlling every damn thing in my life"
- she won't have time to see the b/f this semester anyway

Thank goodness for family drama. My driving was particularly alert and smooth this morning.




Early cellphone photo from here [link]

Surprise!

Jaded as your average limo driver might be, some things can still surprise us.

No, it won't be a couple (or a group) orgy-izing in the back of a stretch and it won't be sweet young things drinking until they puke. It won't be centi-millionaires not tipping, and it definitely won't be idiocy on the roads.

While waiting for my non-dancing folks on the weekend, I was surprised by Florida's governor gently descending the escalator into baggage claim at Tampa airport. His relatively new lady wife accompanied him, which was, frankly, way more of a highlight than the presence of Mr Crist in such a plebian setting. She's hot, as befitting a New York society gal.

Two points of note. One, Mr and Mrs Floridian Governor travelled on Southwest Airlines, just like the rest of us. And, two, he waited for his own luggage for forty minutes like the rest of us. Bags might travel free on Southwest, but we aren't re-united with them speedily.

As you would expect there were cops and bulky guys in suits milling around, but they remained low-key. Poor unsuspecting folks were randomly accosted by the smiling, handshaking guv, looking precisely like the politician he is. Florida's not a big enough stage for him - he's currently running for US Senate, so I guess he's winning votes one glossy grin at a time.



Pic from here [link]

Misunderestimation

You have seen me at airports, in the baggage claim area. I'm the guy with the long-sleeved white shirt and tie, suit vest or jacket, and a sign with a name on it. The name will be that of the person I'm meeting.

I wear a look of distant boredom. Making eye contact with hundreds of strangers is tiring, so I focus on the middle distance and try to appear like I'm not scoping out the fun parts of ladies.

Time passes. The object is to find my customer amongst the sea of transitory humans who are all, also, looking for someone. Hence the sign.

The sign is important for two reasons. It keeps most people away - I'm someone else's and I'm not available to dance. The sign is meant for the one with whom I have been promised a dance. Sure, it's an odd kind of dance involving them sitting behind me while I drive, me being super-polite, and me be transparently obsequious, but it's a dance nonetheless.

Which is why today was so odd. I was there, looking blank, with a sign. The people who were looking for me saw the sign. They decided not to make themselves known to me.

The people - a mother and two teens - didn't know the steps of the dance. I saw them look and point, but people do that all the time. They didn't look, point and then walk up to me.

That's the way the dance works; I do not know you, and likewise you do not know me. It's my job to provide the sign, and it's your job to recognize your name. And then walk up and stand in front of me. If you choose not to participate in the dance, even after you have said you would, be not surprised if I go home.



Pic from here [link]

Chug, Chug, Stop.

It wasn't so much the fact of running out of gasoline. If it hadn't been me, it would have caught one of the other drivers. So it was just my karma that led to me rolling to a stop on the side of I-75. Dead engine, dead limo. And two customers wondering what kind of cracker-jack outfit The Boss runs.

The warning signs had been there for a while. One other driver asked me a couple of weeks before if I'd noticed weirdness with the gas gauge on that particular limo, a six-passenger. I thought nothing of it. Standard procedure for all drivers is to fill the tank after each run, so the next run can start with a minimum of set-up time.

There was absolutely no reason to think the tank was anything but full.

That day's job was to collect two people to drive them to Orlando for the Cleveland-Orlando NBA final. They had tickets three rows up from the Cav's bench. Pretty big night.

I did my usual prep work: Ice in the bars and a cooler-full in the trunk; water, soda, juice, a couple of newspapers; vacuum and clean the windows. Start the engine, and note that the gas is showing full. Everything normal.

We drove about thirty miles before the thing coughed, coughed, chugged and stopped. You can imagine the sinking stomach I had, wondering what the hell I'd done to deserve this miserable fate. It turned out that the previous driver had not filled the tank after her run even though she'd driven at least 180 miles...because the gas gauge showed full. This in a car that (at best) gets about 15 miles per gallon. She apparently thought the damn thing ran on air that night.

The deeper problem is that The Boss doesn't encourage the kind of feedback that might have caught the problem then and there. Had the driver mentioned "Hey, the weirdest thing - I drove all around last night, and the gas gauge didn't budge from full" any normal business owner might have investigated.

And saved the whole misadventure.

There is a vaguely happy ending. The Florida Highway Patrol man (breakdown division, not the tax-collection types) happened along around ten minutes later. He had about one third of a gallon of gas, which was plenty to get me to the next exit and a service station.

After a speedy cruise up I-75 and I-4, a sneaky end-run the back way to Amway Stadium, my folks were just in time for tip-off.

Perhaps karma works both ways.

Oh, and the problem was diagnosed as a faulty sender unit in the tank. And it's still that way today. It really is a cracker-jack business.



Pic of 1964 Lincoln from here [link]

Three Chauffeur Sins

There are three mistakes never to make as a chauffeur:

1. Refrain from punting the limousine into the scenery.

2. Never, ever lose your cool with customers.

3. Never, ever run out of gasoline.

Guess which one of these rules I broke last spring?


Pic from here [link]

The Network

After a while, people get to know who you are. Word spreads, impressions are made, value judgements are lodged in brains.

I know this because I do it myself. This checkout person at the supermarket is better than that one, and I look for her; that bartender smiles and engages so I tip more; I never attend the Church of Starbucks because (with rare exception) they all suck.

Customer service is a battle of millimetres, fought to the tipping point, at which point all is lost or all is gained. Someone should write a book about that. (Ironic Joke.)

So when people start asking me to help them with limo or towncar bookings, I smell something's up. They'd rather deal with me than The Boss, who, more than ever, could give a shit.


Photo of the Cadillac Eldorado from here [link]