Puke

The Boss levies a $250.00 puke charge if ever someone loses their dinner in a limousine.

What he withholds from customers is that he doesn't pay for a professional cleaning of the limo. He expects we drivers to make the vomit disappear. Granted, we get the money, so a case could be made for us to encourage drinking to excess and barfing. But closer examination and common sense dictate what a bad deal it is all around.

Contemplating this whole cleaning business, I guess that when chauffeurs drove coaches with real horsepower, they were expected to clean up after the nags. Huh. I wonder.

The normal deal is that when we return a limo to the depot, we clean the interior. Oftentimes it will take an hour or more to ready everything so that the next driver need only add ice and be on his way. As you can imagine, the appeal of this at 5:00 am is limited. But if the car's going out the next (same) day, one has no choice.

Choice, however, is what I offer customers who do upchuck in a limo. This happened a few weeks ago, when the two women in a party of ten both barfed. The both attempted to make the window, and they succeeded to a point.

Naturally, no-one tells the driver that this has occurred. They'll hope I'll miss it, but experience is a valuable commodity. With some people, I check. So it was at 4:00 am that I was running my flashlight over the interior and came across the telltale drips and goops of vomit. Two areas. I pointed this out to the guys, and gave them the choice: You clean it, or I do it for $250.

That's how I came to be watching three drunken bums use six rolls of paper towel and a goodly amount of cleaning product to clean up their chicks' vomit. Just when they thought it was done, I'd point out a chunk or a dribble they'd missed.

How wonderful to see off-duty police officers grovelling.





Vintage Scottish chauffeur from this interesting site [link]