As the saying goes, I made this rod for my own back.
Back when I was less cynical about the driving game, I'd take on pretty much anything The Boss had to offer. I was - in his words - available and willing, just the way he likes his vassals. There was nothing I'd turn down.
That works for a while, until late night jobs blend into early morning jobs. The way that happens is that on Friday he would allocate everyone's limousine and Town Car runs for the weekend, through until Monday. Then on Saturday morning he would take a booking for an early Sunday morning airport run, despite the full roster.
Let's examine this for a moment. Back in the good old days, limousine runs rarely finished before bar closing, which is 2:00 am around here. By the time everyone's been dropped off, I've driven the limo back to base and cleaned everything up, there's not much change out of 4:00 am, or even later. I've seen quite a few sunrises.
But The Boss only acknowledges the dispatch ticket with the 2:00 am finish time. He sees that, then is perfectly happy expecting one of us to be ready for that 6:00 am run to Fort Myers airport that he's just taken.
Seriously, he has NO ability to understand that:
a) the customer might go over the stated time,
b) the driver's night doesn't end with the last drop-off, and
c) we are human and therefore suffer fatigue.
But here's where I am to blame.
In my race to make some decent money, I would take the extra morning run, and talk myself into thinking it's just the same as doing a night shift. I know, I know, it's crazy, especially given the absolute pittance that these things pay. But there you have it. Often I would have been up for more than thirty hours, picking up some unsuspecting person on their way to an airport somewhere.
When business fell off a cliff two years ago, for the most part that kind of thing stopped, replaced with something even worse. Now The Boss is happy awarding me late night airport pickups, which can often extend to 2:00 am, followed by those horrid 5:00 am jobs. Not only do I lose a night's sleep, I don't even have the benefit of the money from a limo job.
The worst of all worlds.
And it's all my fault.
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