Limousine Life

Daylight Limo Rides

2011-04-21T18:42:00.005-04:00

Daytime limousine rides are a rare but sweet kind of fruit. Obvious advantages over night-time runs are the fact that it's light (yes, obviously, but very importantly) that you generally feel better (not exhausted by being awake when the body says go to sleep) and that they finish at a reasonable hour (therefore I can get to bed at the same time as regular people.)

The people who book a stretched limousine from noon until 10:00 pm are different from the night-time crowd too. They tend to be older, richer and happier. Often, the booking is made months in advance.

A recent run was representative. I was to meet eight folks in the parking lot of a local restaurant in The Boss's super stretched SUV. Naturally, he has given me NO details...no idea of who the customers are, where we are going, nor if it's a special occasion. All I have is a time and a place.

But experience told me the people would be fine, as indeed they were. As is usual, the organizer introduced himself to me, and gave me the outline of the day. His friends all arrived, and they're loaded with food and booze and in very high spirits. That's good. Happiness breeds happiness. When I see bottles of champagne, I too am happy.

But not everything is rosy. The airconditioning in this machine works satisfactorily, but not brilliantly. It's a constant refrain from the back, asking that the a/c be turned up. All I can do is to tell them that it will cool down as we get under way, and that it's a big volume of air to cool on a hot Florida day. They don't care. If the least thing is wrong, people bitch. Sigh.

Another pending problem is that I have a navigator on board. A navigator is someone, almost always a guy, who wants to know every turn you plan to make. If you don't describe precisely the route, they'll pick it up and correct it. Unfortunately, this turkey is sitting right at my shoulder...which leads me to raise the divider. Thank goodness for the divider.

The plan was a common one: to Tampa for a matinee live performance (The Jersey Boys) then to an early dinner at a fancy steak house, and then home. That part was easy, and almost quite fun. I had time to read three newspapers, finish my book, make a few calls, spruce up the interior of the limo and take a half-decent lunch. (The latter's not always easy, given how tricky it can be to find a park for the beast.)

After dinner, I was looking forward to dropping off these people and getting home. After all, I'd not finished until 4:00 am the morning before. (More bullshit scheduling from The Boss.) And then came the kiss of death...they wanted to stop for ice-cream. Oh, great. No-one can agree on where to go, and everyone's tired, so they're not communicating. The difficulty for me at a time like this is that I hear three different instructions from the back, but when I try to clarify which ONE I should follow, no-one speaks. It's like I have to play the parent to a bunch of nine-year-olds.

Mr Navigator then springs into action. Okay, if you just make a U-Turn here, he says, pointing hopefully at a break in the median. My eyes roll in their sockets. This thing takes about TEN lanes to make a U-Turn, and gently suggest that another, wider intersection a little up the road will work better. He starts questioning me, asking what I'm doing...

...until he observes for himself PRECISELY how much real estate this damned machine needs for a U-ey.

But it all worked out. And it turns out that they were all real estate agents, on a pep-up trip, hoping and talking themselves into a better year ahead. Good luck with that, guys and girls.

And for a bunch of people who LIVE AND DIE on percentage sales commissions, the tip was abysmal. But I didn't care. I was home in bed before midnight.

On Tiredness

2011-04-19T20:11:00.005-04:00

For two days I have not driven further than the grocery store and the beach. There's not much driving work at The Boss's shop anyway at the moment (surprise) but sometimes I need concentrated down-time.

To the untutored eye, the life of the limo driver looks to be a lot about doing nothing. As I say to passersby and other people I talk to whilst on the job, my life is all about waiting. We wait for flights to arrive, we wait for people to emerge from their house, we wait for concerts to finish, we wait for strippers to take the last dollar from the bachelors. Lack of motion defines us.

Except that waiting is not the same as doing nothing, nor is it the same as hanging around at home. Waiting creates a sub-species of stress, based around being ready to spring into action at very short notice. Think of fighter pilots sitting in their jets at the end of the runway waiting for the call to scramble - sure, they're idling, but relaxed they're not.

Not that waiting for an arriving flight is the same as defending the country, although if we fail to find our customer at the airport some of them are prone to starting WW III. That's the stress. It is fear of something going wrong, for which we are blamed. Most people are pretty quick off the mark with a phone call to The Boss if something goes wrong. That tees him up ready to take a swing at us, notwithstanding that we've done everything right.

If the customer takes the wrong escalator to the wrong arrivals hall, it's not my fault. If the customer fails to meet the limo at the previously decided corner, it's not my fault. If the customer fails to tell me that it's not THEM travelling, but their daughter and her boyfriend, it's not my fault if I don't recognize them.

But it ends up that I get heaped upon, because the driver is at the end of the power line, and at the head of the blame line.

So much of my time is spent out-thinking customers. I'll pre-call to confirm arrangements. I'll draw maps and make drive-bys to point out a place I can safely stop. I'll even park up the limo and follow people so I know where they are - drunks are prone to foxing innocent drivers by claiming to not know where they are.

It's all part of being a driver, but with all the sleuthing and figuring out human nature, I sometimes I think I should start a private detective agency.

Haves and Have-Nots

2011-04-11T12:34:00.004-04:00

Insane political definitions aside, I have one simple test for defining whether a customer is rich or not. Ahem:

Those who fly in private jets* are rich. Those who fly on airlines are not.

Pretty simple isn't it? The reason I like it is because it is so clear-cut, eg:

Rich people don't mix with poor people at airports - they have their own terminals.

Rich people leave when they are ready, not when the airline says it's okay.

Rich people are orders of magnitude more wealthy than everyone else - to afford that fancy chunk of aerospace magic requires it.

So that's settled then. But that leaves a fair number of The Boss's customers who would disagree with my description. They would - I'm sure - say that they only travel first-class, that they are Diamond-Edged members of such-and-such an airline's Blah Blah club. All well and good, I would say as I drive them to the airport in a Town Car with crappy brakes and 300,000 miles on the clock. (Rich people use rich-people limo companies.)

But the litmus test is this: from a first class seat with an airline, can you stride to the cockpit and tell the pilot that you have changed your mind? That you just don't feel like Vail today, and that you'd rather go to Taos, where you've just heard the snow is perfect? And if you did manage to do that on your airline flight without being shot, gang-tackled, or generally beat-up by everyone on board, would the pilot actually do it?

No. Of course not. Rich people get to change their minds in-flight. The rest of us do not.

[*For consistency I include turboprops in the 'private jet' category, but not piston-powered planes.]

Miss Apprehension

2011-04-07T18:42:00.004-04:00

All I'm saying is, if the person blocking everyone at the gas station sports a long blonde ponytail, don't assume it's a woman. Sixties relics can be deceiving from behind.

How about moving your truck and getting outta the way, Miss?!

D'oh.

Majority

2011-04-04T14:25:00.007-04:00

One fact about the limo game - there's always something unexpected in the wind. The Boss graciously assigned me a small-stretched run a couple of Fridays ago, six passengers for a local night out, pick-up time 23:30. Twenty-three thirty, that's thirty minutes before midnight.

It's not that unusual, the late-night start. The under-thirty crowd is aggressively nocturnal, apparently, and arriving at a bar close to midnight is cool. By necessity that usually means being there for closing, often a messy thing. Most places in our neck of the woods have a 2:00 am close.

So I resigned myself to another back-of-the-clock night working for peanuts. I had an airport run late-afternoon, so I tried to nap for a while before heading off to prep the vehicle.

Although I'm used to this kind of weird working schedule, a small knot of dread accompanies me with late-night gigs. There's no way to avoid the fact of circadian rhythm, which for most people means slowed thinking processes, tardy reaction times and skewed decision-making. It's the reason pilots must have certain periods of rest between duties, and why the accident rate skyrockets for shift workers. In a potential bomb like a fully-laden limousine, mistakes can be fatal, and with lots of drunk passengers, it's easy to go wrong too.

I began the usual routine, around 9:00 pm. Shower and shave, dress, drive to The Boss's warehouse; check out the car, load the ice, inspect for cleanliness; make sure of the address, lock up and head out, allowing plenty of time to get to the customer's place. I'll need caffeination, so there's a mandatory stop for coffee.

All the time, the start time is bugging me. The Boss, of course, imparts no extra information. All I know is an address, a time, and a total of six people. Nothing more.

Oh, and a cell-phone number. Approaching the condo, I call. The woman on the other end tells me the gate code, and that 'he' will be down shortly. Who is 'he'? Where are the others? How come you're not coming? All questions I want to ask, but cannot.

Travis looked eighteen years old, but was polite and chatty. We were to head off to another address to collect five of his friends. About half-way there he moved forward to talk through the divider. Turns out that he was recently back from Iraq, serving with the US Army. Tonight's limo ride was a gift from his mother...because at midnight he would turn twenty-one.

Click. He was planning his first legal drink as soon as possible. Now I understood.

Good guy. He was the perfect client, the best and brightest indeed, a tribute to his unit. His friends, however, could have done with some of the civility that army life apparently imbues.

But that's another story.

Familiarity Breeds Happiness

2011-03-30T18:25:00.006-04:00

1941 Town Car Pic Credit

The essence of happiness for a driver is knowing the future - when going on a run holds few mysteries or potential surprises. That (mostly) means that we know the client and where they are planning to go, or likely to go.

The best example is collecting a regular client from the airport. In our case, that means one of the airports more than an hour away from home base, to make it worth our while in terms of what The Boss pays. The local airport is (fortunately for us) poorly served. That means anyone looking to travel without connection is forced into using a Town Car service for the first or last hour of their journey. It's our bread and butter.

I know that Doctor S likes newspapers, I'll happily buy a handful to keep him happy. He often travels with a checked bag, and so prefers to meet his driver in the airport in baggage claim. And so it happens. We both know each other, and it works. Once in the car, he immerses himself in the papers, emerging only when I tell him he's home.

Guaranteed low-stress trip.

Max W, a super-busy business guy hasn't time for checked bags, so he will always meet curbside. I'll wait until his flight is a little distance from landing, text AND voicemail him with my exact position, and he'll appear there. Sometimes we even meet at departures, or at a less busy airline's baggage area. He likes to outwit convention, even if it only saves .04 seconds. He'll be on the phone when he emerges, so he'll look up at me, say "Hi Wombat" while I grab his roller bag. I put that in the left rear seat while he's getting in the right, and I melt rubber screaming out of there. Metaphorically of course. Max just likes the idea that we're hustling all the way. And he likes Coca-Cola, so of course I have some on ice already.

It's a well practised, predictable operation.

Mr and Mrs B are wealthy-ish older family folks who turned a Snowbird habit into permanent Floridian life. She's a bit wobbly on the pins, so definitely needs meeting in the baggage claim, as well as me carrying all her bags. They love to chat, starting at the point of us finding each other, ending only when I finish complimenting her on her beautiful garden. It's ninety minutes of more or less non-stop banter. They sit in the back of the Town Car, telling me what they've been up to inbetween calling ALL their VERY LARGE family informing them they're off the plane and in the car, on the way home.

Mr B wants nothing more than some ice-cold water and the local newspaper, so he can catch up on what little occurred while he was away.

It's another well-rehearsed and happy groove.

If only all jobs were as calm.

Season

2011-03-28T12:51:00.006-04:00

First Minivan Fiat pic credit.

I'm contemplating wacking a bumper sticker on my car:

Welcome to Florida - Don't Forget to Leave.

Jaded, you say? Well, pretty much. Our yearly influx of Snowbirds is currently augmented by Spring Breakers, meaning that my small Gulf Coast town more than doubles in size. And by the Wombat Traffic Theorem, traffic idiocy is proportional to the cube of car numbers, expressed thusly:

I(t) kinda = (C*M*S)

Where I(t) is traffic idiocy, C is total cars, M is total minivans, and S is total SUVs.

If you sense my Road Karma Reservoir is running low, you would be right.

Too Much

2011-02-23T18:12:00.005-05:00

Porsche Panamera interior pic credit.

Some people tip too much. I know, it's antithetical for someone like me to say, but it's true nonetheless, that some people are overly generous with the gratuities.

The gentleman I have in mind is an interesting study. Not the most charismatic guy, he's obviously set on looking after all of the drivers slaving for The Boss. Upon his insistence, we automatically add thirty percent to all of his invoices as a standard gratuity, but he also oftentimes palms us a note as well...and not a twenty, either.

Oddly, all this money makes me uncomfortable. There are two reasons for this. One is that while Mr Tipper is always polite and never demanding, I have no connection with him. We talk only perfunctorily, and never with humor. His wife, more friendly and outgoing, is kinda the same. Secondly, I really never feel like I've earned the tip. A lot of his jobs are very simple local limousine runs, collecting a couple or a couple of couples around five in the afternoon, and driving them to his house. They have dinner and a few drinks, and then I drive them back. It's so easy.

The only downside is that we have to sit in his underground garage for the three hours in which they're eating and socializing, but that's no imposition if one is prepared with books, newspapers and a nosebag. All in all, he's the ideal customer, but still there's something that makes me feel guilty about accepting such amounts for so little input.

The Boss's angle on all this reveals much about him. He is mostly pissed off with Mr Tipper for this reason: with that thirty percent tip, we drivers often net more money from the run than he does.

This makes him angry, which tells you all you need to know.

Overheard

2011-02-21T20:15:00.004-05:00

Rods and pistons picture credit

Yes, it's true. The partition is not soundproof, and pretty much everything that goes on back there is audible to the chauffeur.

Saturday night provided a prime example. My charges were a bunch of working folks on a night out to a sporting event. I think their boss had somehow subsidised the trip, because the hourly rate was well below that which The Boss customarily charges for the giant stretched SUV. Sigh. Who knows how these things work, but from my point of view, 15% of a smaller than usual number is a smaller number than otherwise. If you get my drift.

It's always interesting noting how people react to a limousine if it's their first time. It actually DOES make them feel important. A few elements contribute. There's the fact that I open and close the door, call them Sir and Madam; there are the tinted windows, and the general feeling that they might be famous; and there's that idea that everyone feels like they are SPECIAL for the night. Alcohol heightens all these emotions.

Along with the usual drinking/socializing banter, it became clear to me that the folks planned on smoking a little weed at some point. The partition was up, so they don't know that I could hear all this. The argument ran along two lines; they could blow the doobie now and be stoned for the game, or they could wait until the ride home and party on afterwards.

Fortunately they decided that walking into the game reeking of high-grade Chihuahuan Mind-Bender might not be good form. After the game it was to be.

Insert three hours.

At that point, once all the photos had been taken and everyone was on board, I quietly suggested to the group leader that there was no smoking in the limo. But if they wanted, we could stop at a nice rest-area a few miles down the road, and everyone could stretch their legs and take a comfort stop. Wink wink. The message got through.

Better than that, once at the rest area, all but two of the twelve disappeared out of view for fifteen minutes or so, thereby giving me at least some kind of deniability. It's a dumb move, really, because if Johnny Law stopped us and made the people for moronic dope fiends, I'm not totally out of the frame.

But that's a story for another time.

The lesson here is that sound-transparent partitions are a good thing, if it helps keep us all out of trouble. Only the stuff that affects me sticks in my head.

Partition

2011-02-20T13:18:00.004-05:00

VW interior photo credit

All of The Boss's limousines are equipped with partitions. The partition is an electrically operated barrier that isolates the passenger compartment from the driver. In essence, we're already in a separate space - the partition just fills in the hole.

My attitude towards the partition changed a while back. As a rookie driver, I took the view that customers preferred a more open interior - the ability to look forward through the partition cut-out and so through the windscreen - and easier communication with their faithful servant up front. In the smaller limousines it can be a little claustrophobic back there.

Here's my routine thesedays: with new customers, when I show them the controls (lighting, heating, sound) I make a point of demonstrating the partition up/down switch, by saying:

...and here's how you ditch me...

at which point I raise the partition and leave it up.

With regular customers, I often start with the partition up, or, if not, use this lame line:

...so I'll just give you folks some privacy now...

whilst I roll that thing up.

Remember, I have a switch for the partition too. It's important to tell me NOT to use it ahead of time if you don't want me to surprise you.

I'm reminded of the way fancy hotels do this. When the customer service person escorts you to the room, they show you important features you might need immediately. Then they leave, close the door, and allow you to explore your room on your own.

People behave differently if they think they're being watched. Oh, and if they think they can't be heard.

Early Shift

2011-02-15T18:29:00.005-05:00

Daimler Motorcycle pic credit

My resolution to take greater control of my life by no longer accepting morning jobs is sorta working out. My work has declined by, oh, about two-thirds. Not only is The Boss not assigning me morning jobs, he's not assigning me afternoon or evening jobs either.

For a couple of weeks there I was doing two late-night airport runs per week.

You see when we drivers show signs of non-compliance with Boss's wishes, he punishes us in the way he knows best, by withholding work.

When I first began in this game, he told me how he likes his drivers: desperate and compliant. That tells you everything you need to know about how he views the limousine business - it's all about making life as easy as possible for him, and nothing about finding the right people to provide the best service.

Frankly, I find this kind of commercial horror encouraging. If someone so out of tune with people can still make a living, the opportunity for anyone with a modicum of common sense is huge. This is still the land of success built on hard work and fair dealing.

What's interesting is the way in which regular customers are revealing to me how The Boss treats them on the phone. Some are shocked at how brusque he's become; others say outright that the only reason they stay is because they like we drivers. There are lots of those kind of folks.

Notwithstanding, business is slow during the week, and moderately busy on weekends. And gradually I'm moving out of the bad books. This last weekend was crazy busy, a situation that causes His Lordship to forget about keeping me down in order to get me out there on the road.

Perspective

2011-02-14T16:49:00.004-05:00

Duesenberg at what looks like Pebble Beach GC

Adding up all the pluses and minuses of a driving job, it's easy to come up with a negative number. Horrible hours, low pay, idiotic bosses, capricious passengers, dopey cops and crap cars make for pretty big number less than zero.

On the flip side, there's one biggie which will stick with me for the reminder of my days - a better understanding.

I'm not certain what other work puts one as close to a lot of different people in situations where their vulnerabilities are on show. We see people under stress (when travelling) pushed to the limit (in business situations) behaving excruciatingly well (in public group outings) and behaving excruciatingly poorly (on those same public group outings, often on the same night.) Yes, many service industry folks see folks untied, but not in quite the same way as we do.

Partly this is because drivers are both close and invisible. We're robots who drive, and therefore of limited utility when that's all we do. But when the customer needs a resource, we are immediately elevated to equality, and sometimes higher. The alchemy of human emotion can change the way we're viewed in an instant, depending upon the need of the person paying the tab.

What's clear to me is that people are all incredibly flawed. I, of course, am no exception. However, witnessing so many individuals allowing their emotions to rule their outlook gives me understanding that perspective is in short supply. Just as most people driving cars at 80 mph are unable to think more than one lane stripe ahead, so they can't see more than one lane stripe ahead in their lives, whether we're measuring by time or distance.

Distance - that's what a few years of observing people has given me, or more accurately detachment. It's the reason long-time drivers have a zen-calm surrounding them. They KNOW that good replaces bad, which is replaced by good; lean times swap with plenty; and human nature never changes. For that exact reason, you'll rarely see a chauffeur giving in to road-rage. We understand that cutting into a line or ridiculous tail-gating saves precisely .002 seconds on the journey...and that kharma is a more powerful force than even the biggest engine.

Calm and perspective, the most important unknown elements.

Elder Bullets

2011-01-19T14:13:00.005-05:00

Chrysler Photo Credit

It's Florida here, as far as the eye can see. That means there are oldsters, as far as the eye can see, although most of them aren't actually visible because they're warehoused in "Senior Housing Facilities".

We have occasional jobs originating at these places, but they're less frequent than I think they should be. Whether that's because the inmates - sorry, residents - are careful with their pennies or The Boss doesn't market to the elder community I don't know. Oh, well, actually, I do. It's the latter.

Sunday afternoon saw me booted and spurred at one of these places. Oftentimes all we have is a time, an address and a name. The Boss can't be arsed giving us more background, using the catch-all "As Directed" on the dispatch ticket.

I parked close to the reception area, did a final check to make sure the Town Car was presentable, and went in search of my customers. The receptionist (a relatively spritely ninety-year-old) pointed me back out to where I'd come from: my clients were sitting outside under the porte cochere waiting for me, fifteen minutes before time. I'd walked straight past them.

Interesting, this phenomenon. Wouldn't you think that, watching me park the car and walk past them in dark suit and tie, they'd click that I was there for them? * shakes head *

In any case, my two nice ladies were being treated to an afternoon out, courtesy of a generous nephew many states distant. First, to a matinee, then to dinner, then home.

Actually, before going anywhere, we had to negotiate getting into the car. Both had walkers and inflexible bodies, so each ingress and egress was like the docking of a Carnival Cruise liner...without the cocktails - slow, choreographed and ever-so-clumsy.

But I'm making it sound worse than it was. They were both in pretty good spirits, enthused at the idea of having a chauffeur, interested in me - my marital status, which church I attend - for a while, quickly becoming bored with a topic like old people do.

The only spark of discontent came from the horror that sometimes one of them had to walk slightly further (around the car) to access the door on the other side. I failed in the quest to make each side of the car equidistant for each of them.

Of such small snits is old-age full I imagine, although I worked as hard as I could to make their day as easy as possible.

For some people, enough is never enough, although I shall record that they both gave me a cash tip - an unexpected bonus given my knowledge of how old ladies operate.

Afternoons and Evenings

2011-01-16T20:02:00.005-05:00

Cord cockpit photo source

Finally, I got around to telling The Boss that I'm off mornings. What a relief. I should know by now that the time between 4:00 am and 7:00 am is critical - not sleeping in the hours encompassing that span wrecks my day.

It also wrecks my health, albeit at a slower rate. I've been reading lately where the average American's average night's sleep has declined from nine to seven hours in the course of the last few decades. Sleep deficit is allegedly responsible for lots of medical problems, from weight gain to cancer. I believe all of that.

Naturally, The Boss has seen fit to punish me. He's not a subtle man. After I explained that working any time after noon is fine, he called me - three days later - asking if I could make a 9:00 pm airport pickup. There's no sarcasm in his voice, but the intent is clear; he wants us all to be his 24/7 lapdogs. Breaking with his desire will not be rewarded.

As I explained in a previous post, I didn't have much choice. I'd allowed him to assume that I'd work very late finishes followed by very early starts. My fault really, but the occasional overnight turned into more than a few. And he's not the type with whom I can logically explain my reasoning. Upon receiving a booking, he'll look to fill the driver slot with the least work possible on his behalf. Until now, that meant calling me.

So I suffer with his displeasure for the moment. Frankly, I'm happy. I'm feeling better, and his business is collapsing so fast, there's more or less no work anyway.

Humour Me

2011-01-10T18:42:00.004-05:00

Fabulous Ferrari picture from here.

You've seen me, or one of my colleagues.

We're waiting on the baggage claim level, or where you emerge from the satellite shuttle. Or we're at the exit from the customs hall. Most often we're formally dressed, often inappropriately so.

We carry a sign, which we hold up for all to see. A name appears on that sign. I like to create a handsome hand-drawn sign, but sometimes The Boss creates one via the computer.

His say "Smith"

Mine say "Welcome, Monica Smith."

If you're NOT Monica Smith, do me a favour. Do not walk up to me and say:

"That's Me"

or

"Hi, I'm Smith."

Your brilliant, original wit is wasted (for the one-hundredth time) on the likes of me. Take your act to the people...at the cab rank.

Inconsiderate, Inc

2011-01-07T22:55:00.006-05:00

Early morning pickups are fraught with danger.

Everyone (in general ) has cut the timing right to the bone, so every minute counts. One particular job comes to mind, a 3:30 am collection time, although I must say that there are plenty just like it. For a start, the customer's house was in a fancy gated community, which all take an age to navigate.

What's with the endlessly winding streets spread out over thousands of acres, guys? There's nowhere to walk. There are no sidewalks. There are no shops. There's nowhere to go and nothing to do. Unless you are endlessly entertained by golf what the hell is there to do in these places? And if golf does entertain you 24/7, there's no saving you. And neither should there be.

I'm there, early as usual, at this guy's mock Italiante Villa on a golf course in Florida. The time is 3:15 am. I've been up since 2:00 am. I'm ready to drive this dude to Tampa, and go home and go back to bed.

It's not reasonable to knock or ring the doorbell that early. Maybe there are kids, maybe there are relatives. I reverse the Town Car into the driveway and wait. The hope is that the customer will walk out the door, luggage in hand, and be ready to go.

Fat chance.

At 3:30 I rang the bell.

A minute later the wife opened the door and scampered down the faux granite steps to explain to me that her husband had overslept, and that he'd be out momentarily. Sure. Whatever. Like my time's worth nothing, because dopey forgot to set his alarm.

Thirty minutes later, Mr Business appears at the doorway, grip in hand, freshly showered, ready to go. Excellent! Good-morning sir, may I take your luggage? Please, take a seat here, we'll be under way as soon as I can.

Sorry, he says, the alarm didn't go off.

And you know, I believe him. He was completely apologetic, and an interesting guy to boot. And I feel bad that his company, which trades on the Pink Sheets OTC is not doing so well.

We all screw up. But at 4:00 am, it seems that much worse.

Sleepless in Florida

2011-01-04T20:51:00.005-05:00

Bugatti picture credit

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.

Twisty Ending

2011-01-01T14:42:00.009-05:00

Jaguar XK140

In marked contrast to the trend of 2010, the last two nights of the year were surprisingly sweet.

After some problems with The Boss during the week whereby he screwed a fellow driver, I wasn't pre-disposed to long drunken stretched limousine jobs. He's becoming a capricious prick.

I am tired, too, after a couple of weeks of late finishes and early starts.

Thursday, the second-to-last day of the year, was slated as a 2100 start for ten in our giant stretched SUV. Experience tells me (even if The Boss doesn't) that with a pickup at that time the clients are young. By extension, that means:

* drunkenness
* loutishness
* messiness
* meanness
* tiplessness

Two good signs upon arrival: the kids waiting for the birthday girl (the limo was a surprise for her 21st) are standing around quietly having a couple of drinks, and actually talk coherently to me when I introduce myself. The other is that the parents came out of their suburban house to take a look at the limo.

Interesting social dynamic here. If a twenty-one year old woman's parents are still sufficiently involved in her life to join in (at least a little) the probability is that she is relatively civilized. Innocence is a much under-rated quality; growing up quickly is over-rated. I liked that the oldsters were impressed with the ride. That spoke of a kind of quiet normalcy which (I hoped) found its way into the daughter and her friends.

I have learned to find one person in a party to act as the Captain, my point of reference. It's not always easy to tell, but in general, the biggest guy is the one I want on my side. Makes sense, right? Talking to them all is impossible (do these kids NEVER listen up?) so I rely on peer pressure.

He received my little talk about under-aged drinking, puking, puke clean-up charge, heads out windows, blowing up speakers, and communicating clearly with me.

It's never a waste, I find, this chat, even though there's no telling whether it makes any difference. In this case, these folks were a dream. Sure, the idea of a 21st party is to get the celebrant to puke (apparently.) We can count that as a success, but she managed it cleanly into a garbage bag without spillage. Top points.

The ride was as simple as it gets. We went to one bar, where I dropped everyone. Four hours later I received the call to pick them up, and drove them home. It doesn't get any better, especially as they were minimally messy. Including the aforementioned rite of passage puke. (Which they left for me in the garbage bag neatly tied up and in an empty beer box.)

Then they tipped 20%, and I was in bed by 2:30. Like I said it was a sweet night, and I hope for them, too. The boyfriend (who paid and organized) although drunk and looking after his girl, took the time out to come up and expressly thank me.

Maybe there is hope for future generations.

To Err is Human

2010-12-28T17:54:00.005-05:00

Photo Credit

It must seem like I'm constantly criticizing The Boss. I guess I am, but only because I see him through a particular prism, the way he conducts business. If you met the man, you would be charmed, at least initially, and find yourself entertained with his stories. He is a salesman.

But the fun of a salesman's company soon wears off. He is only about as deep as cheap kitchen laminate, and the stories all have a sameness - he's a hero, and the rest of us are zeroes.

To list and explain the daily cornucopia of unique behaviours this man exhibits would require an entire book, so I'll start with the simplest and most enduring - his complete unawareness of what's going on.

It will typically happen like this: I, or one of the other drivers, will be on a job. We'll either be on the way to collect a customer, on the way back to the depot after completing a job, or the customer with be in the Town Car or limo. The phone will ring.

W: Hello, Wombat speaking.

B: Wombat, it's The Boss.

W: Yes, Boss.

B: I have a job for you.

W: Good-oh, can I call you back for the details?

B: Oh, why?

W: Well, I have Mr and Mrs Bond in the car.

B: Really?

W: Yes, Boss.

B: Oh, I didn't know.

W: Remember, you gave me this job yesterday?

B: Oh. Well, anyway, call me when you can.

Seriously. This happens ALL the time. The man isn't aware of where his cars are, where his drivers are or where his customers are.

I kid you not.

Christmas Eve

2010-12-27T12:20:00.001-05:00

Honda S600 Photo Credit

Christmas Eve is the second-worst day on the road. The worst is Thanksgiving, when sweet old ladies take their Corollas out for the once a year spin. Gotta keep that oil circulating you know, young man.

Christmas in Florida means minivans doing one hundred, minivans doing forty, and minivans fogging my dreams. Waking to the frustration of driving behind a Michigan-plated Honda Odyssey is my reality at this time of year, and, waking or sleeping, I'll never know which lane they plan to be in next.

Trouble is, THEY apparently don't know either. Grrr.

This Christmas the highlight is how much The Boss has neglected his business over the last year or so. Never one for regular, scheduled maintenance, his cars are all showing their age. The Town Cars in particular are up around the 300,000 mile-mark, and run like it. One of them stinks like burnt onions when the aircon runs, the other one rattles like a bucket of bolts under acceleration, and the other one burns about as much oil as gasoline.

In years past, I gather, Bossman would regularly ditch the old machinery to keep the fleet svelte. Clearly, the dive in business has delayed or cancelled his plans in that area. Trouble is that the competition - there are two or three good other outfits around now - are all running the 'L' model Lincoln Town Cars. With an extra six inches in back seat legroom, wider opening rear door and a raft of other specialized limousine features, these cars kill the standard models we drive. Especially as The Boss charges our clapped out crates at around the same money.

It's sad. I look upon our customers as mugs. If only they knew what a better deal they'd get elsewhere. The fact that we're barely working tells me that a lot of others have already walked.

The interesting part of this is that the remaining regulars are there by force of habit. They think "I need a ride" and so they dial The Boss. Or their PA does so. Any new customers we get are one-timers only, choosing the first or second choice that popped up from where Google laid its egg.

In a fit of civic virtue, I sometimes think the best thing I could do is to hand out cards of one of our opposition companies at the completion of each run, and explain that my gift to them is the gift of inside information. I don't like seeing people ripped off.

Bodily Functions

2010-12-23T13:09:00.006-05:00

1960 Lincoln Convertible Picture Credit

Inevitably, the innocent driver is exposed to the vast universe of his customers' fleshly, fluid and gaseous functions.

First and foremost and the one that springs to mind is the puke, of course. No surprise there, other than the alacrity with which some people will emit a thirty-second stream of vomitus, wipe their mouth with their sleeve and continue drinking.

Shades of Roman-style decadence in that lot.

At one point someone has demonstrated the panoply of gross exhibition including:

~ farting
~ really smelly farting (and not owning up)
~ nose-picking
~ crotch-grabbing
~ crotch re-arrangement
~ digital ear exploration
~ dandruff shaking
~ tooth picking (with little fingernail, for trapped food)
~burping

List not comprehensive.

The one corporeal expression that grates my cheese is the unceasing sniff. One sniff, that's fine. Two, even, I can deal with. But the continual drawing back of the nasal mucus by way of rapid inhalation reminds me yet again how grateful I am for parents who insisted that this never be a failing of their offspring. I am NEVER guilty of public sniffing.

I think the record is around one and one-half hours of a teenaged girl doing this right behind my left ear in a Town Car. Despite self-reminders, I was without tissue-box that day, and so had nothing to offer the hideous youth.

The acts of violence to which one's mind retreats (in order to remain sane) would surprise no-one who, like me, cannot STAND THE CONTINUALLY SNIFFING COMPANION.

That feels better.

Back With a Vengeance

2010-12-21T22:11:00.009-05:00

1939 Chevy Picture Credit.

Oh, man, it's been a weird month.

Trouble is that although writing this blog is a pleasure (and a release) for me, the horrid hours and exhaustion of being UP when the body says DOWN mitigates against spending time relating stories of a life on the road.

Which isn't to say that I wish my driving life to go away, because at the moment it's okay. The Boss has us busy enough to keep us from panhandling at traffic lights, and there are a few other prospects in the wind.

But the endless conveyor belt of human oddity keeps spewing people at me. There's just no telling, as, for instance with a simple airport transfer earlier this week.

The lady concerned is the wife of a prominent property developer. He built a ten-storey condo building that more-or-less dominates the skyline of my Sun Coast town. It is designed after the great architects of Florence, which of course makes the whole complex irredeemably inappropriate for southwest Florida. Why importing architectural styles from foreigners is better than applying local techniques is obviously beyond me..

So I wait in the Medici-style porte cochere for madame (or is that signora?) for thirty minutes beyond our appointed pick-up time. The concierge (which is people in these parts call a doorman) is chatty and effusive. I know him from previous times, he's a good guy, but way too obsequious to his people. He needs to get them in line. Pronto.

The point is that this dopey woman is paying a fixed, rock-bottom price for a ride to the airport. When she does deign to make an appearance, there's all kinds of fuss about the dog and whether it will be allowed to travel on Southwest Airlines in this container etc etc.

Look, lady, you're sweet enough, but given that I'll take out about twenty-five bucks after tax outta this three hour circus, I could give a shit. You have bought a ride to the airport, nothing more, nothing less.

As you might anticipate, the problems with the dog resume at the airport. She has two different sized containers, for the poor pooch: one that will squish him up like an old pair of socks, and another that allow him to breathe. Naturally, the airline wants him in the smaller container into which she then stuffs him. (This from a person who says she loves the dog. Pffft. Whatever.)

AND of course I have to assist with this ridiculous pantomime at the departures curb of Southwest at Tampa airport. AND of course, she is immensely apologetic that she has no cash for a tip.

Like they say, you'll eventually be judged how you treat the small people. And the dogs.

Fire and Smoke

2010-11-22T17:21:00.004-05:00

Picture Credit.

At a stop light recently I watched as yet another smoker took a final drag and flicked her butt onto the pavement. Judging that there was enough time, I jumped out of the Town Car, picked up the butt and offered it to its owner.

I believe this is yours?

Not so long ago, of course, cars were equipped with ash-trays and cigarette lighters. People used these conveniences for their designed purpose. At an appropriate time and place, the accumulated detritus created by this foul habit most likely ended up in a trash container somewhere, maybe at a gas station. In other words, smokers didn't consider the world one vast ash heap.

Modern manners define the kind of behaviour we non-smokers always admired: Values like not smoking indoors, not smoking while we're eating and not smoking in the car. Unfortunately, even SMOKERS have adopted these precepts, meaning that they've gone rogue, or, in the case of the car, gone on the road.

They're everywhere when you begin to look. Their car window is an eighth of the way down. With each exhalation, the owner aims her breath at the gap, polluting the universe outside instead of the universe inside their car. Every so often the lit coffin nail is held out the window, the ash flicked everywhere, again, but inside the car. And then, at the end of the nicotine hit, the butt is deposited insouciantly everywhere OTHER than the puffer's immediate environs.

It's the same act as the dog owner who refuses to collect her pooch's rancid coils. THEIR world is pristine; OUR world is a toilet.

So I offered the butt-hole litterer her butt back without success. Such language from such a pretty girl. But I think I made my point, if only for this sorry tale.

Just Perfect

2010-11-14T19:24:00.004-05:00

Photo credit.

When The Boss calls at 1:30 am, it's never good news. He isn't calling to see if we'd like coffee and a slice of pizza, nor is he calling to tell us what a good job we're doing.

He's calling for one reason only: he's awake, and he's angry.

The usual deal is that I hand the limo company's business card to the customers so they know how to contact us. I try to do this both when I first meet them, AND when I drop them at their first destination.

On one side is the regular phone number; on the other is a space for each individual driver's number. I always hand out this card and POINT OUT to the people that the number to call is the one on the back labeled WOMBAT. Then I beg them NOT to call the number on the front, which, as I explain, calls The Boss.

You can put together the pieces. Drunken/stoned/stupid idiots will dial the number with the biggest print.

At the same time as The Boss is calling I receive two other calls from my Surbuban Gangsta wannabes, demanding that I return to collect them. Having previously explained that I cannot hang around on the street near their club, I ask if they're ALL TOGETHER.

You can get the gist of the answer from the 'click'.

Sigh. Nothing new in all this. Fifteen too many drinks, out of control egos, logic circuits burned out by the desire to get laid - this isn't going to be pretty. Of course when I lob at the front of the club, only a handful of these wankers is there. My backup plan is a parking lot I know of just around the corner, so I head there. It's one way in and out and only as wide a table-tennis table, so it requires a twenty point turn to get pointed the right way, but eventually we're settled, ready to head out.

Then the screaming begins.

Turns out that one of the young 'men' has tainted another of the young men's manhood with a stray drunk comment or two, and they're now bashing the shit out of each other next to Robert's limousine. For a moment I think about it. Then I decide that all I'll get is a large dry-cleaning bill, so I simply watch as these two gentlemen settle matters with honour. Frankly, I wished they'd used duelling pistols...that would have been more interesting.

Eventually the moody brawlers are separated, and we head back. These people are on a fixed release date, remember, having paid cash ahead of time, so I was ready to leave in any case.

We pulled up back at the front door of the bar from which we'd left pretty much on time. I was so glad to have the night over that I think my spirits were as high at that point as at any other during the evening.

It took two hours to clean up after the pigs.

No tip.

The Boss spoke to me on the Monday and accused me of being asleep while 'your customers were calling you.' He trusted these fools more than me.

And there, ladies and gentlemen, you have the kind of arseholes who own limousine services.

Trying Times

2010-10-23T11:32:00.004-04:00

In a stroke of good fortune, I wasn't the only limousine that our Country-Club Rappers had engaged for the night. There were two of us, from different companies. And the really good news was that the other driver was a very cool dude, an older guy who'd been around the business for way longer than me.

Guys like Robert have seen it all. Nothing gets to them. A few punk-arsed show-offs trying to impress the girls make no impression whatsoever, and neither do the girls. Watching him operate was a thing of beauty. When someone put their drink on the trunk he was there lifting it off - not saying anything, but reprimanding with his action. If one of the guys started doing something truly stupid, you could feel Robert's power from a distance, and the kid would stop. He was a kind of bouncer/enforcer...but one who magically acted from a distance, like he had a magnetic super-power that alerted dumb drunks that they were behaving like jackarses.

Eventually we went in convoy to Ybor City, to the most popular club there. Two stretched limousines stopped on 7th Ave will block traffic, so we tried to get the drunks out and ourselves moving as quickly as possible. But no, these dopey kids literally stopped as a group in the middle of the road, lighting cigarettes, flipping cars the bird, resisting all opportunities to exhibit civilized behaviour. The cops had seen enough of this after a few minutes and moved everyone on - including Robert and me - much to my relief.

By now it's 11:30 pm, but there's not time to slack. Instead, it's time to clean. Of course these numbskulls have made a maximum amount of mess in the back of the limo. I often wonder why it is that people so often feel the need to do this. They wouldn't do it in their own home, or their own car...or perhaps they would. Apparently part of the stretched limo experience is to create and wallow in a dumpster. I look at the soaked napkins, spilled drinks, trash everywhere, bottle-tops inserted all-over and wonder why they do this kind of willful destruction.

It takes me an hour to clean up.

I buy us some coffee and a sandwich from the gas station in which we're parked.

We chat.

Another limo comes along, but the driver's not as nice company as Robert, so I withdraw to the airconditioned car for a while.

Around 1:30 I get a phone call, and it's not my people. It's The Boss.

Havana pic from here [link]

Guardhouse Gangstas

2010-10-10T21:55:00.004-04:00

All of which set me up for a surprise.

When I pulled up in the ten-passenger stretch at a few minutes before 10:00 pm, a knot of people was there already, and my, weren't they dressed!

My guess is that he had turned twenty-five, give or take, and as suspected, the birthday boy had organized the night. He and his buddies were in the modern young man's idea of Dressed Up. To my eyes it looked somewhere between late Jimmy Durante and early Groucho Marx, but what do I know? White ties and black shirts come and go in the fashion world like transmissions on a Cadillac.

But back to the business. I try, always, to start off the same way with every new customer. I'm polite, friendly and deferential. This only works with people who understand that this is a dance, and that I'm offering to lead.

I can help you negotiate this, if you put your arm out...like so...and follow these simple steps. I want you to succeed, young man, but you have to play along. We don't know each other yet, but if you trust, your life will be easier. For at lest the next six hours.

Who was I kidding?

A guy of twenty-five is at the top of his ego/responsibility ratio and reacted accordingly. After loading the car with booze, we hung around waiting for all the partiers to feature. Of course, we weren't going anywhere until the magic cash crossed my palms, but he strung it out. That's fine by me. Had he not paid, I'd be happy to drive off.

Whilst we sat around for forty-five minutes, I watched these guys. They were all from pretty well-off families. Beneath the tough-guy bravado lay an upbringing revolving around a private school education, a childhood in a 4,000 square-foot house on a golf course, and a security gate to keep it safe from bad guys.

And what was their unanimous music of choice? Gangsta. Hard, loud and rotten gangsta. I nearly laughed out loud. These prissy pretty boys with CZ studs and other crap in their ears and Jager shots in their hands fancied themselves urban crusaders.

Golf-Course Gangstas. Security Guard Bad Boys. Limousine Tough Guys.

There's more :-)

Money Matters

2010-10-07T09:20:00.009-04:00

Limousine jobs commencing later than 9:00 pm always warrant caution. Let's face it, these people aren't going to a charity ball.

More caution is merited when the pickup address is a bar of somewhat dodgy repute. And even more evidence of trouble to come is when The Boss calls me an hour beforehand and says that he ran the credit card provided (because he had a "bad feeling") and it was declined.

Great.

The Boss is particular about payment. He accepts credit cards to secure a booking, but of course he'll take cash as full payment. He provides neither terms or credit, there's no billing, nor will he accept cheques, the latter because depositing them requires more effort than he's prepared to invest.

It is a smart way to operate, to give him his due. Possessing a valid credit card number means that if customers break anything or merit the puke charge or promise cash payment but fail to deliver, he has some recourse. Thesedays, of course, credit cards don't work as well as they used to. Hence his caution.

So the night, a Saturday, isn't off to a great start. The prospect is of a bunch of demanding drunks who can't actually afford it going clubbing. Experience tells me that someone here is showing off, boasting that they're taking a limo, partying it up etc etc. Oh, and it will be a late, messy finish.

The Boss is leery now, even though the guy got back to him with a decently accredited credit card. (Many phone calls are required while I'm preparing the limousine to resolve all of this.) As is usual in these circumstances, he instructs me to take cash for the six hours before anyone steps into the car.

Actually, I like this way of operating. Firstly, it means that The Boss has his money up front for the run, which means I shall be paid. Secondly, it establishes that I have the power to stop and start the run at my discretion. Thirdly, it obviates the always awful scenario at four in the morning as the organizer attempts to screw money from his buddies. (It's always the buddies - women scatter at the point when they have to cough up cash.)

Driving to the pickup address, I contemplate the fact that nothing ever works out as one expects on a night like this...

Mercury Parklane pic from here [link]

Farm-Ins

2010-10-04T19:43:00.006-04:00

If you're a captain of enterprise (or work for a captain of enterprise) and end up out of town, chances are you'll need a ride somewhere. Cabs are dirty and unworthy for Highly Paid Important People, so it's up to the livery industry to provide them with luxury chauffeured wheels.

Big business tends to centralization in all things, particularly low-level functions like transport. This means that if you, you HPIP you, arrive in my sleepy Floridian town, chances are you'll be driven around by an operator engaged by way of what's known as a 'farm-in' job.

Let's take the example of someone from the money-management industry who flies in from Boston to deliver a seminar (ahem, sales pitch with lunch) to rich old people. His company's preferred town car provider is Boston Coach, which happens not to have an office nor any cars here. What to do? They call their preferred partner hereabouts and farm the job out to them.

Occasionally, The Boss receives one of these things. He hates them. They always involve use of electronic aids, such horrors as email and the facsimile machine * shudder * as well as never-ending phone calls, and, worst of all, a high proportion of cancellations.

I hate farm-ins too. For a start, we all know that the client is paying way more than the amount we'd charge for the job. Boston Coach will be charging big-city corporate rates; we're a small town, small business operation, with rates commensurate. It kinda bugs knowing that I am the least paid person in the chain, but the one taking all the shit.

Inevitably the customers (who aren't paying out of their own pocket, it should be noted) are arrogant SOBs who take great pains to demonstrate just how much more important they are than a mere driver.

That's all fine, and part of the deal. Despite that, there is a little fun to be had. Oftentimes a representative from the mother ship will call me directly. Sometimes it is as often as three times in the hour prior to the nominated pick-up time. Always the same conversation:

Is this Wombat? Yes.

You're aware you're collecting Ms Codfish at 12:30 pm? Yes.

Where are you? Sitting in the front left-hand seat.

Very funny.

How are you dressed? In a toga.

Interestingly, we seem not to get so many farm-ins thesedays.

Packard Town Car hood ornament from here [link]

Silence

2010-10-02T11:36:00.007-04:00

Some folks can live in silence, others die in it. Because our airport transfers average around an hour of driving, there's a lot of time, time which some of my customers fill and time that others do not.

Rule One for Chauffeurs: Speak only when spoken to.

In practice we don't adhere absolutely to this, but exceptions are few. Our routine is to meet arriving customers in the baggage claim area, greet them, and either walk directly to the car or wait for their baggage.

Within a few seconds, one can tell if they're silent types or not. Yes, it is odd standing next to someone at a baggage carousel for thirty minutes without passing a word. Equally oddly, for someone who loves words, this doesn't bother me in the least. In fact, I would rather remain silent than be forced into a conversation in which I cannot fully participate or listen to jibberish silence-filler.

There are some customers whom I'd happily drive to Vermont. We could gab all day and never bore ourselves. Obviously, these are the people with whom I have connected, with whom I need not filter as much. Another group of customers I'd also drive to New England, and never pass more than ten words. The third group comprises those who are constitutionally incapable of oxidizing without talking...about the first thing that reaches their tongue. For these people, a silence in the car is a small death, so naturally they talk.

The art of engaging in conversation as a chauffeur is a fine one. I cannot actually be myself - hells, I'd ask way too many personal questions - which leaves only conversational acting. I navigate these tricky waters by listening to what my customer says,and reflecting it back to them. Basically I attempt to affirm their own view of themselves, and keep my own thoughts to myself.

It's a game, and like a lot of games, it can be tiring. Frankly, I adore the silent trips, and for those I drive who think likewise, they do too. Last night, a new customer actually said so.

Joy. (And a nice tip.)

Nice photo of a Studebaker.

Into the Unknown

2010-09-28T19:31:00.006-04:00

One characteristic of working for The Boss is that every job tends to hold some mystery. That makes the work a little like a sausage, or McDonalds's burger meat - it's clear in general what's going on, but one doesn't always know the detail.

Nor, perhaps does one want to know, but that's a philosophic thought for another day.

After only one airport job for all of last week, the weekend was decently busy. Saturday night I was blessed with the worst gig of the six on the roster, a three-hour limousine job starting at 6:15 pm.

Three hours is the minimum time for which The Boss will rent his machines and drivers. That's fine, but by the time one has showered, shaved, dressed, driven to the office and prepared the car with ice and other bits and pieces, three hours pay is barely worth it, especially on a Saturday night. The ideal weekend night job is one with a 7:00 pm pickup and a 2:00 am finish. That is enough time to make it worth actually driving to work, has a decent starting and finish time and a high likelihood of a good booze-driven tip.

But we of the underclass aren't able to choose. We work with what we're given. Sometimes it works out okay, as did this gig - it was about as easy as it gets. A couple had a dinner to attend celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary and had me to drive them. Their daughter had booked and paid a deposit on the ten-passenger limo back in June, an unusual circumstance of itself.

Before leaving the office (which has an attached warehouse in which all the cars are kept) I had to call The Boss to pump him for some more detail. He'd told me it was a wedding, but the address on the ticket made no sense. (Attention to detail isn't high on his list of priorities.) Upon reviewing his notes, he came across the small detail that my presence with a giant automobile was to be a surprise. Important point, don't you think? I would have normally bounced up to the door at the requested time, but that would have ruined the daughter's plans.

The oldies couldn't have cared less. After a smooth, surreptitious arrival, they had no real enthusiasm for the fancy ride. I drove them two miles to their dinner in a rented hall, waited two and three-quarter hours and drove them home. From where I sat, I think they would have rather foregone the whole thing, stayed at home and ordered pizza.

Asking the wife about the secret to fifty years of marriage, she looked at me, slowly chewed her gum and shrugged.

I guess that was my tip.

Austin A-40 interior photograph from here [link]

Wedding Tears

2010-09-21T08:40:00.005-04:00

Weddings all, to me, appear underfunded and under-organized. Not to say that well-funded weddings are necessarily better planned, because I've seen many expensive 'Wedding Planners' royally mess up. But there's a clear lack of forward thinking skills in this area.

(Note to military veterans: This is a giant market in which you folks could create a very profitable and successful business. From my experience, weddings could all do with a big dose of military sensibility. These people need someone to tell them what to do.)

Which brings us to Saturday. As far as weddings go, this was at the top end. If the bride is reasonably calm and happy with the way she looks, everything works out from there. (For me.)

Chrissy was just as you'd want - friendly, not completely self-absorbed, and she looked great. Her self-organized wedding on a budget looked like it was on a roll when she and her bridesmaids emerged from her house at the appointed time. That's always a good sign. You know you're in trouble as a chauffeur when more than twenty minutes goes by before there's movement.

Mostly, the bridesmaids are a dead weight at weddings. They are all more concerned with themselves than the bride - a contradiction of their title...maids. They should be there to look after the woman at the centre of things, but too often they're bitching among themselves or off smoking ten cigarettes. This group smoked (OMG did they smoke) but Chrissy's sister and one other 'maid kept on top of things.

Until someone fielded a call from the DJ at the beach.(Florida: Beach weddings are all the rage. Don't. Just...don't.) He didn't have any electricity to run his music system. (Amazing. No power outlets at the beach. Dummy.)

The bride cried. Not big sobs, but the tears and quivering lip routine.

Thus began a thirty-minute scramble to find a boom-box so Chrissy could have her wedding march walking down the aisle music.

Fair enough: It was her big day, and she wanted the damn music.

Once they'd finished cussing out the dopey DJ, we put the plan in action. We found a store with a portable CD player, bought some batteries, and we were good to go. Problem solved.

There were a lot of side-plots to this wedding. It's amazing how much human drama one sees in a three-hour limousine ride. One bridesmaid hadn't altered her dress to fit, and had to swap with another; the groomsmen were supposed to ride with us - thirteen people in a ten-person limousine; the bride's mother and father not speaking to each other. The usual.

And in the end, the CD didn't play. The bridesmaids beat-boxed the bridal march. I was proud of them...that's what they're supposed to do.

Wedding limo from this Aussie site [link]

Ybor City Animals

2010-09-20T08:10:00.007-04:00

Busy, a new feeling, even if it was only for one day. The weekend was the busiest for weeks, handy because now I might nearly make enough to pay a few bills.

Saturday was notable for blessing me with two (2) limousine runs. The first was an afternoon wedding run, which included a crying bride...but I'll save the tears for another post.

After that The Boss scheduled a 9:30 pm pickup. A bunch of twenty-somethings were heading out on the town in Ybor City, Tampa's high-crime sewer of a club district. Despite that, Ybor is an interesting place, centre of the cigar-rolling business for which Tampa used to be known.

Thesedays Ybor attracts the drunk and drugged crowd. I've seen more knife-fights, punch-ups and general anti-social behaviour on the streets there than anywhere else in the world. Besides that minor detail, the streets are narrow and there's no parking for a stretched limousine, so you can imagine how happy I was to be there.

As usual, the cops standing on the corner turned a blind eye to me stopping traffic on 7th Avenue to unload my people. It's a two-lane thoroughfare, and they understand we drivers are just trying to make a living. I move on as quickly as possible. But as I'm about to drive off to find coffee, another cop, a mounted policeman, guided his steed in my direction.

Using one of those dismissive hand gestures they teach in cop school, he indicated he had something to say.

"You can't park here," he said. I looked up at him, then to the two cops standing behind him on the sidewalk, and back to him.

I wanted to point out the double standard - two sets of cops, two different rules - but thought better of it.

Those horses are BIG.

Back of the Clock

2010-09-15T08:40:00.001-04:00

In our county, bars stop serving at 2:00 am.

Last drinks are drained at 2:30 am.

Everyone's in the limo by 2:45 am. (Fingers crossed.)

We're heading home at 3:00 am.

Someone wants food at 3:05 am.

Stop at Taco Bell at 3:20 am.

Leave Taco Bell at 3:45 am.

Last drop at 4:20 am.

Now is when I gas up, park-up, clean up, wash up, tidy up and lock up.

I might be home in bed by 06:00 am.

Another back of the clock night done.

Night shot from this excellent blog [link]

Puke

2010-09-13T19:36:00.003-04:00

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]

Sunny Sunday

2010-09-12T17:44:00.005-04:00

You have to count your blessings. After a big, restful night's sleep, it's not so bad waking to the alarm at 6:00 am on a Sunday morning. Really, it's okay.

It was a beautiful morning, the humidity in the "I can handle this" range and I have an airport transfer to do. Shower, shave, put on the white shirt I ironed last night, a once-over with a lint-roller, check in the mirror, and I'm out the door. In a suit.

What I'd rather be doing is heading to the beach for a swim. In my boardies. After that, a lie in the sun, then I'd take coffee. But here I am, driving to The Boss's warehouse to collect a towncar; someone needs a ride to Tampa airport.

An older guy, it turns out, around eighty, needs that ride. A couple of odd details stand out. One, he's not listed as a resident on the intercom system, and the concierge doesn't know him. Two, I know his residential address is not in this downtown high-rise. His real house is in a gated community on a golf course out in the 'burbs.

Five before eight, my people arrive in the lobby from upstairs. The gentleman and a lady, a decades-younger lady. She's in her fifties, over-tanned, over-skinny, not quite certain of how to deal with a towncar chauffeur.

It's not that difficult. When I ask you if you'd like me to take your bag, you accept my offer. I roll your bag to the rear of the car, then I open the door for you. I then attend to the gentleman in the same way. You both sit in the air-conditioned car while I load your bags in the trunk. When that's done, we go.

Simple. Or so you'd think.

Anyway, my over-riding thought is that if you're on your way to Amsterdam (First Class), constantly blowing and popping bubble-gum won't endear you to anyone. That shit should have ended during the Nixon administration.

Olds roadster from here [link]

Canary in the Coalmine

2010-09-10T23:51:00.008-04:00

Another slow week in paradise slips by. It's Friday night and I've done precisely two (2) jobs in the last six days. One was a late-night airport pickup; the other, a five-hour limousine run which I just finished.

With all the time I have to contemplate such matters, I think it is possible that the limousine business is a great leading economic indicator. No-one needs a limousine or a town-car service. Taxis are (and will be - they're like cockroaches, a professional opinion) always available. Although a town-car is in fact many dollars cheaper than a taxi for the kind of airport transfers we do, the perception is of indulgence.

I'm too sophisticated for a taxi; I deserve a car service.

Sometimes ego saves money.

To add insult to pauperdom, a friend and fellow driver had his entire bank account emptied by the IRS this week. They claimed he owed them $22,000 in back taxes from 2002, which he hotly denies. Makes sense to me, knowing his work history. The frightening thing is that the US Federal Government can take your money without notification. I guess that's one way to find the
$13, 000,000,000,000.00 they spent on our behalf.

All well and good, but when he can't pay the rent, or the phone bill, or for gas to get to work, I'm not sure how much of an asset to the economy he can be. Like most drivers, my mate isn't officially counted amongst the unemployed, but like all of us, he is seriously underemployed.

Which brings me back to my point. The limo game is a confidence indicator. When people are upbeat and want to either travel or celebrate, we see them in our cars. Our services are a minor luxury - even for folks who saved up for a year to attend a Metallica concert - that tells much about the collective conscious.

My read is that everyone is hunkering down. If that changes, I'll let you know. For now, the depression continues.

Photo from here [link]

Rescue

2010-09-05T13:39:00.005-04:00

Breakdowns are inevitable, we all understand that. But no-one thinks - or wants to think - it will happen to them. Someone else should bear that burden.

I'm sympathetic to anyone stuck in a broken automobile, which is how I came to hurriedly shower, shave and dress at ten o'clock last night. A fellow driver was stuck at a rest area off the interstate with twelve customers and a busted limousine. I don't know the guy, and he works for the opposition service here in town, but I like to think that if I needed a hand, the brotherhood of drivers would come to my aid.

It's karma, right?

Here's how these things work: The driver breaks the car, and spends time placating his customers. He calls the boss, who is safely at home on his second Saturday night six-pack. In turn, he calls a tame mechanic, who is on his second fifth of vodka - well it is Saturday night, after all.

No immediate repair option then. The opposition boss then calls The Boss, knowing we have a humungous stretched SUV that can do the job. The Boss is on his fourth or fifth bong of the night, but can see more green by sending me out. So I get the call. Probably the only sober/straight driver in the county at that point, I figure I can help.

The elapsed time from that call to me rolling into the rest area was one hour and seven minutes. Now having done this kind of rescue before, I know what to expect. The driver is grateful and relieved. The Boss is counting his money. The opposition boss is glad he'll be receiving no more abusive phone calls. But the customers, ah the customers. Far from being happy, they get into an odd state of mind where they're sorta happy, but still sorta pissed. And you know who bears the brunt of that action.

We swap out the coolers, the drinks and the plastic penises, because this is a bachelorette party after all. Within ten minutes we're under way, and they've lost only an hour and a half of their night. Seems like a win to me.

Everything proceeds normally after that. The group disembark at the bride-to-be's place at 3:00 am. I sense that not everyone is happy, a pretty standard state of affairs when twelve people get together with some booze. Tension has a way of squeezing into a party like this.

You'd think that my part in the rescue operation would merit a little special thank-you or some kind of acknowledgment...and you'd think incorrectly. No tip, no warm words, nothing. But as I have discovered, that's standard.

My reward is the karma. Apparently.

Classic drawing from here [link]

Friends

2010-09-03T13:06:00.006-04:00

Regular customers are the backbone of The Boss's limo business, not that you'd know it.

I shake my head at how he treats these people. One guy in particular pays around thirty percent more per airport transfer than everyone else. The reason? Because the bills go straight to his corporate office, and no-one there ever does a comparative analysis against other limo companies.

I suspect that he instructs the finance department not to question the cost because he's comfortable using our service. In reality that means that he likes we drivers; we go out of our way to look after him, and he knows it. Yes, he's demanding and particular but we know how to handle him.

After spending many hours driving guys and girls like him around, you get to know them. The power gradient is huge, of course - we're mere drivers, they're captains and captainettes of industry, but a personal relationship of sorts can spring from this thin soil.

That's nice, and makes for more pleasant working days, but drivers should never mistake cordiality with friendship. The subtext must always remain in a chauffeur's head that this is a customer/servant arrangement, nothing more. Taking liberties and making assumptions can land you in trouble. Quickly.

Only when a customer has invited you into their house for social reasons can you change the footing in your mind. Until then, one has to understand one's inferior position. And I chose that word very carefully.

Saab picture from here [link]

Chauffeur Enemy #1

2010-09-02T12:21:00.005-04:00

Over a beer:

Mate: So what do you think is the most dangerous car on the road?

Me: That's easy - the minivan.

Mate, after five seconds silence: Man, that is so true.

Chauffeur enemy #1. The unpredictable, chaotically driven minivan. Stay well clear.

Early minivan photo from here [link]

Syrup

2010-08-31T18:08:00.006-04:00

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

2010-08-30T11:01:00.008-04:00

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

2010-08-29T19:43:00.006-04:00

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

2010-08-27T20:45:00.005-04:00

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

2010-08-26T08:00:00.003-04:00

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.

2010-08-24T11:31:00.004-04:00

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!

2010-08-23T07:56:00.006-04:00

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

2010-08-22T01:18:00.006-04:00

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.

2010-08-14T09:40:00.006-04:00

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

2010-08-12T09:49:00.004-04:00

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

2010-08-10T19:00:00.004-04:00

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]

The Boss

2010-04-21T23:10:00.006-04:00

In the past, when I listened to self-improvement tapes while I ran or walked, most of it literally went in one ear and out the other. Not much stuck inbetween. One thing that did, however, is the idea that many of us are mentally stuck in high school.

It appeals to on a visceral and a logical level. I saw it in myself, I guess, and that brought home the horror of being a fully physically mature man and still a mental adolescent. What an awful thing. And you know what? I have found this again, in the figure of The Boss.

It's not new to me, given that I've been living with this thing for years, but events of recent times show me that it's time the veil of anonymity be raised, if ever so slightly. I want to bring this face of stupidity right out in the open, if only for my own fun. As a man I trust completely says, to think bad things is one thing, but to do them is quite another.

I wonder where blogging about a complete douchebag fits?

Cartoon from here [link]

WORK

2010-04-05T03:26:00.004-04:00

Man, I am tired.

Work popped up out of nowhere over the last two weeks, which characteristic of any service industry should be well known. And still people are surprised.

Now, to pay that dentist's bill...

Courtesy link [link]

Little Old Ladies

2010-03-10T12:31:00.010-05:00

It's the fact of living in Florida, but many of my adventures revolve around old people. Seniors, in the argot, or oldsters, or silly old farts depending on my mood.

In the limo game, I learned from experience that little old ladies belie their benign looks (and reputation). In real life, these people are sharks, manipulating hapless optimists like me with the skill of a Reno card dealer. Don't let their stooped stature and old-lady smell fool you - they know the value of a buck, and how to keep them in their purse, and out of your pocket.

The job sheet showed me collecting two local ladies from Tampa airport, late on a Sunday night. Two friends on vacation sharing a towncar ride back to their respective residences; it's a common-enough deal.

Let's say the total was $140.00. It's normal for folks to use a credit card to reserve a booking, and then pay cash. The Boss is always up front about the cost, which he is careful to make clear to the customer. Also, another driver had driven them to the airport a week earlier, so they knew the drill. And to further solidify the arrangement, we talked about the fact they were paying cash, half each. They knew exactly how much the ride cost.

After I'd schlepped the first lady's bag to the door, she gave me a handful of cash as arranged. Being as I was trusting of Little Old Ladies at that point, I didn't count it. Like I said, she'd already been through this on the outward leg, so why would I question it?

The second lady lived in a high-rise. Dutifully I carried her three bags full of gold bricks up the stairs, into the elevator, and along the breezeway to her apartment. She, too, gave me a handful of cash, and in the same trusting manner, I shoved it in my pocket. She also made a point of saying that there was a little something for me there too.

That's nice. A small tip for my manual labor makes for a happy evening...

...until I returned to base and counted the cash. Instead of a $70-00 wad and a $70.00 plus-some wad, I had two $65-00 wads. Not only had I been swindled, there was no gratuity and she knew it. The choice at that point is to make phone calls, knock on doors and go chase the money. But then I saw this episode for what it was: a ten dollar learning experience. So I added a sawbuck of my own and to this day I count every note that passes my hands.

Sorry, I trust you, but a couple of old grifters shook me down once....

Pic from here [link]

Also published here [link]

Zombies

2010-03-01T23:11:00.008-05:00

Has anyone else in my town noticed?

I think we are in the midst of a Zombie Invasion. It might be that these...things...are from outer space, but they choose minivans and F-150s as their transportation devices. Aliens, I'm sure, would be in flying saucers.

These Zombies look just like you and me. They have this uncanny human look about them, right down to the humblest detail. They wear spectacles, sometimes with those clip-on sunglass accessories. Their clothes are normal-looking, if a little dated. There are lots of man-made fibres and everything seems just a tad too tight, except when they wear deliberately loose-fitting stuff like 'work-out' pants and such.

But they're part of Zombie-Nation alright. Just watch them when they drive. Only the undead could drive as poorly as that. Three-lane changes leaving their arse sticking out; flipping bitches* at random intervals; exceedingly slow progress in fast lanes; exceedingly ill-timed entries onto fast-moving thoroughfares - no, these aren't humans. No living person could possibly be that bad behind the wheel.

Interestingly enough, this Zombie Invasion seems to have started in Michigan. And Wisconsin. And Indiana. It's like all the Zombies decided to take a driving vacation to my town and create as much havoc on the roads as possible. As much as the undead can, that is. Which is rather a lot, as it turns out.

*Pulling a U-Turn

Also published here [link]

Flat

2010-02-26T09:29:00.004-05:00

Most of my working time is spent on airport runs. It's basically taxi work, but pays some bills between the much more lucrative limousine runs. Some drivers, and some companies for that matter, make airports their specialty. That's understandable, because towncar transfers are simple compared to driving groups of drunks around.

If you make airport runs your bread-and-butter, you end up doing a lot of miles for your dollar, which creates its own set of problems. First is the boredom. Imagine driving the same 60 mile route ten or more times a day, seven days a week as a buddy of mine does. I fear he leaves a small piece of his sanity on the side of I-75 every trip.

Another occupational hazard is the inevitability of mechanical problems, and that bane of drivers everywhere; the flat tire. This was my first as a limo driver, and happily enough the story ends up well. I had parked at Tampa airport with ten minutes to spare before my customer's flight's landing time. In reality that gave me ten minutes, plus ten minutes for it to taxi to the gate, plus ten minutes for her to deplane and find her way to baggage claim. Let's call that 25 minutes to be safe.

Of course, we carry only the 'donut' get-you-home spare in the towncars, not a real wheel and tire. Fortunately I was in a well-lit, level spot, so the change went pretty smoothly. Twelve minutes from start to finish, which surprised me. I feel for the folks who get stuck on the side of a busy freeway. That's downright dangerous.

Scuttling downstairs, I washed my hands and stood waiting for my customer. The plan was to be honest and upfront - it was likely to take us twenty minutes longer to get to her house than normal. The donut is limited to 50 mph, somewhat slower than our usual 70 plus. The alternative was to help her into a taxi.

Fortunately, my wonderful customer was completely cool and let it bother her not at all. Being in the car and on the way was good enough for her. She checked her email, ate her sandwich (delayed flight, no food) and we had a nice chat. When we stopped in her driveway she joked that it was the her longest ever trip time...but she was smiling. She even offered me a cash tip, which I refused. Her good humour was more than enough.

The Boss, of course, charged her the full amount. Heaven forfend he take some off for the inconvenience.

Pic from here [link]

Puke

2010-02-22T15:02:00.004-05:00

Saturday night's bachelor party conformed to every basic guideline I have written about these celebrations.

The roster of highlights included:

~ a certain aloofness from some of the passengers to start.

~ a couple of them who are friendly.

~ lack of pacing their drinking, including Jagermeister in the first hour.

~ increasing friendliness towards me from even the most haughty of the guys.

~ losing money at the casino.

~ losing even more money at the strip clubs.

~ being the group's best buddy when I find an open liquor store.

~ vomiting, see below.

~ a sleepy trip home.

~ nice tip. Thanks guys.

The puke happened in the car park at the strip club. Chilling out, finishing their drinks before heading in, I sat at the front reading my book. The "Door Open" annunciator lit up on my panel, so I jumped out to attend. What I saw was a fountain of puke, a literal technicolour yawn pouring from one of the guys. As we decided later, he was a pro, making sure not to spew inside, keeping it down until he could reach the door.

Checking to make sure he was okay, I quickly returned to the front, and reversed up twenty feet or so.

When the groom exited, he said to his buddies:

Hey, there's an extra twenty for Wombat's tip right there. He made sure we didn't have to tread in that shit.

Another feather in my cap.

Yeah. Great.

Pic from here [link]

Weddings and Limousines

2010-02-19T18:13:00.005-05:00

In response to my friend DC Chick's wedding announcement - congratulations! - here's my rough guide to renting a limo for your wedding. I'll do this in bullet points so I don't forget anything.

* Shop around by phone first. Phone manner will tell you much about the business.

* Ask specifically for what you want; stretched sedan, stretched SUV, Hummer.

* Make sure of the age of the limo - ask the year of manufacture.

* Look for a limo with a bridal door.

* Consider what you and the bridesmaids will wear.

* Tight/complicated dress means you want easy ingress/egress.

* Once you have narrowed it down, go and look at the cars.

* Impress with the number of hours you will need the limo.

* More hours means greater opportunity for reduced hourly cost.

* Make sure when you book you get exactly the car you want.

* If it's possible proceedings will go over time, confirm that's okay.

* Ask about the drivers.

* Ask for the one with the most experience with weddings.

* If it matters, tell them what/how you want him/her dressed.

* Be clear and precise with your plans for the day.

* Write those plans down.

* Send them to the limo driver, together with any specific requests.

* On the day, let the driver know of any changes to the plan.

* Don't forget to put some drinks in the limo. (Booze,I mean.)

* If you have a problem, communicate with your driver.

* Ask him or her for ideas if you need to. Use them as a resource.

* Put some cash in an envelope beforehand.

* Write "Limo Driver" on it, and give it to him at the end.

* Have fun.

Pic from here [link]

Taking Money

2010-02-19T10:53:00.003-05:00

Writing about tipping is uncomfortable. The impression I feel people have of limo drivers is that it's all about the tip, that we're grasping individuals motivated only by the palmed bill at the end.

Probably because this is my first job in direct service of people, the gratuity is still something of a mystery to me. Not that I'm not both grateful for, and work in slight expectation of, a gratuity. But the state of mind that works best for me is to do the best job I can for every customer, and be surprised at whatever happens.

There are no hard and fast rules about who tips well, and who doesn't. What I can tell you is that good tippers are both rich and poor, and poor tippers are mostly rich.

Now I've cracked the seal, I think I'll write more about gratuity life.

This is a good guide to tipping your limo driver. [link]

Pic from here [link]

Chauffeur

2010-02-16T21:04:00.004-05:00

A kind of omerta binds and separates chauffeurs. On one hand we're all intensely competitive, given the value of each customer. We'd steal each other's business in a moment. On the other hand a grudging understanding creates an unspoken brotherhood.

If you drive you know the deal. You know the late starts, the early finishes, the rotten money, the unpredictable customers, the moronic drivers, the foolish bosses and ridiculous bureaucrats.

With the downside come the benefits. Among them are the pleasure of a nice day and an open road; not being stuck as a cube drone; meeting interesting, famous or plain sweet people; and the satisfaction of making someone's day.

Today was a good day, for which I am grateful.

Pic from here [link]

Wise Heads

2010-02-15T20:19:00.004-05:00

Young men and their lady friends sometimes find themselves in the back of my limousine. I'm impressed by the way they do the responsible thing, and pay for one of The Boss's limos (and me) to drive them around instead of doing it themselves.

In Florida, if you blow over .08 you are off to jail for the night, no questions asked. So a few hundred bucks to prevent that is the deal of the century.

These same young men aren't quite full-bottle on some of the finer points of limousine life. For instance, there are ways to circumvent The Boss's no smoking policy. One method that does not work is to raise the divider and light up a blunt. That results in me lowering the divider and politely pointing out that smoking is not allowed in the limousine, as per the rental agreement.

Someone needs to tell these boys that a polite request beforehand, and emoluments in the form of cash go a long way towards me overlooking The Boss and his silly rules.

Pic from here [link]

Drunks

2010-02-08T14:11:00.005-05:00

I will not listen to drunk customers.

Drunk customers have no sense of direction.

Logic deserts drunks.

Believing drunks over your own common sense works against you.

Improved memory is not a side-effect of being drunk.

It's been a long weekend.

Pic from here [link]

Statists

2010-02-04T09:24:00.006-05:00

As soon as man discovered trade, man began taxing it. Along the rivers of Europe the castles of noblemen still stand, testament to the wealth they accumulated by taking money from people moving stuff up and down those rivers. On stretches of the Rhine, tax collectors stopped traffic every few miles. They didn't improve the process; they simply added friction.

Today is no different, except in one aspect. Noblemen no longer tax us; the state does. In Florida, one agency of the state creating friction in our lives is the Florida Highway Patrol. I'm unable to tell you of many of my experiences with the troopers, because that would reveal my identity. But my latest contact with these people sealed the deal - they are modern-day tax collectors, pure and simple.

As a lawyer friend of mine said, they're not there to enforce the law, they are there to hide behind it. Or, as he more colourfully put it, to screw the driver whilst fully uniformed.

Traffic Karma? Nope. Doesn't exist. And if I had any power against usurious government agencies who purport to 'serve' us, I would use it. Arseholes.

Edited for clarity. I think I'm clear now.

Mission Impossible

2010-02-02T09:23:00.007-05:00

Put yourself in this position:

You are to drive an older lady to an airport around two hours from here. You will wait there for a friend who will arrive on a flight, collect the friend, and drive them both to a hotel a few miles away. You will then drive home.

Sounds easy, right? Three or four discrete steps that should be a limousine driver's bread and butter. Simple in theory, a plan that a child could execute.

First problem: the older lady is on a hair-trigger. The smallest slight results in her shouting an inquisatorial rebuke.

Second problem: She isn't familiar with normal towncar/airport conventions. It's normal for someone we are meeting at the kerb to wait at the baggage claim level, close to the baggage belt for their particular flight.

Third problem: She is hard of hearing. When her friend called, it all worked but for one item. My woman heard baggage belt "twenty-four" as "seventy-four" and so relayed that number to me.

Fourth problem: When a plan goes astray, as this one did, the trick is not to panic. We need to contact the person waiting and reformulate the plan. Shouting does not help the resolution of misunderstandings.

Fifth problem: If I had've actually talked to the arriving customer I would have know what she said. The fact that you ask me what she said when you alone talked to her simply confirms what I'd decided - you're insane.

Sixth problem: If you have no pressing appointments, staying cool is really cool.

Seventh problem: When everything is resolved, and quickly, regaining your cool is cool.

Eighth problem: Blaming me for your inability to communicate adequately is insane.

Pic from here [link]

Also published here [link]

Groups Part 5

2010-01-25T21:17:00.005-05:00

We're still forty minutes from home, and the night has taken its toll. After the grease and carbs of the fast food some of the drunks fall asleep, wedged upright, slack-jawed and slack-necked. There might be the odd one or two who share a beer from the bottom of the bar, chatting quietly to each other. But for the most part, the folks are spent.

They've spent their money too. One memorable night in a stretch SUV spanned 7:00 pm to 5:00 am. There's a world in one night on a night like that, and a world of money, too. The limo was well over $1,200. They started with a few hundred dollars worth of booze (and drugs too, I think) and who knows how much they spent in the bars, clubs and strip joints. I look in the mirror as I ponder this. I see twelve people who just proved that money does not buy happiness.

That's what I saw, but what I heard was the sound of kissing. In the seat directly behind me was the host of that particular night, who was noisily pashing his squeeze. The divider was down, part of a making-out-in-front-of-the-driver fantasy, presumably. His collection of friends tended to the rougher end of the spectrum. His squeeze, for instance, was a leggy blonde in her twenties, who turned out to be a stripper. She stripped at our local be-poled hotspot, paying her college tuition with the proceeds. That makes her a student with a part-time job, I guess.

I can't quite remember how it started, but the context of an out-and-out catfight in a limousine at 4:30 in the morning doesn't matter much. The stripper - sorry, student - took a quick powerful verbal jab from one of the other girls who said that she was letting the female side down by taking her kit off for money. She responded by allowing that stripping was okay, feminism-wise, because she had control. Oh, and by the way, the other girl would do it too if she had nicer tits and lost thirty pounds.

It was on. There were no actual real-life punches thrown, not that it mattered. The blood drawn was figurative, which can be worse than bleeding Shakespearean claret. The stripper, sorry, student, was louder and more strident in defense of both her moral and bodily superiority. The feminist made up for lack of volume with reinforcements, all the other women. They set about chopping up their target with finely honed insults backed up with dirty low blows.

The men had melted into the carpet. Not a peep. Not that I blame them. This was World Championship Catfighting that put feral cats to shame. Cats have only claws and teeth; these girls had verbal nuclear devices. Closing in on the house we left ten hours before, everyone had dished out as much punishment as they had energy for. One of them called for a truce, which resulted in a sullen silence for the last few minutes of their night. The stripper apologised for calling the other girl fat. The other girl apologised for criticizing the stripper's augmented breasts.

Stopping (at last) in front of the house, I have yet to see that many people disembark so quickly. They were all out and walking before I could put the beast in Park, open my door and walk to the rear to open theirs. They scuttled away in an air of sour booze and bad temper. Except for the host. He handed me a C-Note, and sped off in his Porsche with the stripper, looking to find some breakfast.

Photo from here.[link]

Also published here. [link]

Groups Part 4

2010-01-22T03:45:00.011-05:00

Time marches on, bars close, and there's nothing left for my people but to go home. Their limousine bill is now up in the many hundreds of dollars, and they've stayed out way later than the original plan called for. The shine is off the evening.

Given the disparate aims of the folks, factions form. The factions sit together and sometimes snipe at the others. People fall asleep, or pass out, as the case may be. But there's one thing on which almost everyone agrees: it's time for some food.

The message comes quietly from the back at first.

How about some greasy food, Wombat?

Yeah, let's do T.Bell I hear someone else say.

Do they have In N Out here in Florida? some out-of-stater will ask.

Pause.

I want pizza says another.

Once they have made the group decision to stop (which will cost more money of course, we're still on the clock here) it almost doesn't matter where we go. I have all the 24 hour fast-food joints along the Interstate memorized, so I'm good to go.

But here's the problem. At that time of night, only drive-throughs are open, and the good people at The Bell and McDonalds and Burger King neglected to build them (the drive-throughs) for stretched limousines. We can't make the turn around the building, so I have to park somewhere adjacent and the folks must order on foot, so to speak. These places have rules. You cannot order at the pick-up window, mostly because at 3:30 am they're running a skeleton crew. What my folks do is line up as if they were in a car. Imagine this. Car with people ordering at the ordering station, car behind that one, two or three of my people standing waiting in line, swaying and slurring, car, car, and so on.

They give their order, and shuffle around to remain in line between the cars. When it's their turn at the pick-up window, you can see the guys trying to be cute with the minimum wage slave as if she were the most beautiful women ever. If it weren't so late, and I wasn't so tired, I'd be laughing my arse off. And still the night is young.

Pic from here.[link]

Edited for clarity.

Also published here [link]

Groups Part 3

2010-01-21T09:30:00.009-05:00

When the folks return from their first stop, I can tell who wants to keep partying, and who doesn't. In general, one or two of the guys will be drunk and they want the night never to end. One or two of the women have had enough to drink and they want to go home. The rest are somewhere inbetween.

The problem comes down to money. Once alcohol takes over, inhibitions disappear, first among them the inhibition to spend money.

Drunk guys say:

Accchhh, c'mon honey, we're having a good time. Let's have fun! Have a drink and relax!

The women who want to go home say:

This is costing us $1.75 a minute, while they give the drunk guys withering looks.

Not that it's always a split along sex lines. There are plenty of girls who are with the 'who cares' program, and sometimes they lead the push. But in general, it's the guys who lose control.

Now I can't see much of what happens behind me. Once they discover the divider, it rarely goes down, and only then to shout unintelligible commands at their erstwhile chauffeur. By now we have probably stopped at our second bar, and might even be on our way to the third. By now people get lost, and we have to wait for them. And by now smokers want just another cigar or cigarette before they load up, so we have to wait for them. Some of them go to find a friend so that he/she can come along with us.

So the group is split into three factions; those who want to go home, but are resigned to their fate; the normal ones who are tipsy but reasonable; and the drunks and smokers and planners and completely oblivious who just wanna keep doing what they're doing until they fall on their face or wake up the next day with a giant grey/green hangover.

The tipping point will come at around 1:00 am. We are more than likely to be either at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Tampa, or at a strip club. If at the casino, one of my people will do something to attract the interest of the security people. Those folks tolerate little. If at a strip club, someone will need to come outside for a puke. It's surprising to me how these little events turn an evening, but turn it they do.

Fortunately, bars in Florida close at 2:00 am or only slightly later, so there is nowhere to go thereafter. Or so you might think.

Picture from here.[link]

Also published here. [link]

Groups Part 2

2010-01-17T10:35:00.005-05:00

When the divider rolls up, you know someone's about to get naked. The air inside limousines is laced with a very subtle gas that whispers in (some) ears:

Hey! You're in a limo. We need some titties here, bucko.

When the first nipple appears, there's a roar from the crowd and the camera flashes begin. One leads to another, which leads to another, and before you know it, breasts are popping out all over. Each pair is worth at least five minutes and if underwear from further south wants part of the action, another five minutes per thong. However, not all is good in this scenario. In that first breast appearance lies the seed of discontent.

By this time we're probably at our first destination. Smart groups book a restaurant table for this stop, but that's rare. Most times the folks want somewhere big and public, somewhere to show off the fact that they arrived by limo, somewhere to remember later. Mostly it's the venue that drove them to rent me in the first place. They have in mind a particular kind of night and this is their marquis stop.

Once everyone is dressed and out of the car, I go to work. There are few opportunities to impress on a night like this, but here's one of them. I clean up, but with a mind to impressing particularly the women. I collect and remove the trash. People are so messy. All the used glasses I wash, rinse, and re-equip with napkins. Don't ask how. The carpets get a sweep, then I tidy up all their bags/coolers/cameras/clothes into some semblance of order. Last thing, replenish the ice in the bar.

Men return and almost never notice my handiwork; women almost always do. That impression remains.

Then I wait. And wait. And sometimes I wait some more.

Photo from here. [link]

Groups

2010-01-13T11:45:00.007-05:00

It feels like a good idea at the time. Call around to a group of friends, propose a night out in a limousine, rev up some interest, and then set a date. Do some homework by asking around a few companies for quotes, figure out how much it will cost, let everyone know. Enthusiasm rules, and so you go ahead and book the limo, and look forward to the night.

Fast forward to three weeks later, the evening of the planned party on wheels. One couple can't find a sitter. Marcy just got foreclosed on. Steve is having a huge blow-up with his girlfriend, and doesn't know if he can make it.

Around this time, I roll up in the stretch. It's probably nine or ten on a Saturday night, and everyone's already well lubricated. So what if we're down three or four, we'll just make up the difference with a few extra bucks. Right! Everyone who's coming here? Let's go!

The arc of the night follows a pretty well-worn path. It's quiet in the passenger compartment for the first ten or fifteen while folks acclimate. Then the drinks take effect, everyone relaxes, and the noise level rises. Oftentimes this is the point at which most people are enjoying themselves the most. They've got the right amount of alcoholic buzz and they see that it's cool to be in a limo. Then things start to unravel.

Pic from here. [link]

Also published here. [link]

Highway Karma

2010-01-08T12:20:00.006-05:00

Miles of pounding the highway gives me plenty of time to think.

Thinking can be dangerous if you're given to flights of fancy as I am. Mostly I think about the other drivers; what kind of person is driving that Cadillac Coupe de Ville at twenty below the limit in the middle lane up ahead? Or is the driver of that Nissan Sentra drunk or texting?

Drawing up beside them, I take a surreptitious glance to confirm or deny my choice. I'm at about 90% correct for this game now.

Or I do arithmetic in my head. I like to figure out my passing time at various checkpoints along the way, and our ETA at the destination to the nearest half a minute. Figuring traffic as well (a dark art if ever there is one) I'm not bad at that game either.

My latest cogitation concerns the Karma of Driving, or Highway Karma if you prefer. The short version is that if I drive for two hours at or below the speed limit, I get points towards driving faster than the limit. Because I have been unwittingly driving like this for a while without earning a speeding ticket, I'm thinking I might be on to something. There is likely some kind of ratio involved, such that, say, two hours of legal driving entitles me to thirty minutes of illegal driving.

An extension of this is the Karma of Traffic Politeness. Allowing others to cut in front without reacting - calm, patient, no resentment - builds up the bank. I'm thinking that a full day of that gives me three cut-ins and one standing on the horn, flashing headlights hands in air verbal abuse free card.

It's not Road Rage, I'm just cashing in my Karma. Officer.

Pic from here. [link]

Also published here [link]

Running Hot and Cold

2010-01-07T10:40:00.003-05:00

After the busy last couple of weeks, this week is dead. Limousine runs are down by more than three-quarters, leaving we drivers with airport transfers and an opportunity to drink plenty of coffee. Down time is fine by me, but not too long, mind. My two-week fund of tips won't last forever, even if my coffee habit only runs to the cheap stuff.

The talk of the country is the weather, with Florida suffering under the burden of close-to-freezing temperatures. I know that must seem ludicrous to those folks in the north (and the real north, Canadia) but c'mon, everyone needs something to complain about. Snowbirds and natives and blow-ins like me are alike in wondering when Florida started imitating Iowa. Iowa without the snow, the clouds, the short days and the -40 temps. But it's relatively cold, y'know?

Which is actually a great relief for we in the limo trade. For much of the time, we have to run the cars with the air-conditioning on full-blast. Working in a dark suit and tie in this climate is rotten until this time of year. Now, it's appropriate. But for the other nine months, staying cool is a big priority. Frankly it's uncomfortable. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I always keep the car running with the a/c on, and stay inside that sucker whenever possible.

This week, that's not necessary. I might be the only person in the country grateful for the cold blast. I heart you winter.

Photo from here. [link]

Christmas 2009

2010-01-04T22:28:00.008-05:00

For some, holidays are holy days. For others, holidays are time for feasts, or family or falling asleep. To me they're a time for work, to get ahead on bills, make some jink.

Christmas Day 2009 saw me driving a regular customer and his wife to her sister's place about an hour south of here. I did the same thing a couple of years ago, and it's interesting to note the differences.

That time, he was quite grumpy about going. He could have been in a bad mood, but the dynamic was that he was pissed off with the wife, and didn't want to talk. In my experience of these folks, he generally wants nothing but to be left alone with his book anyway, notwithstanding any marital tension.

This Christmas she had obviously presented him an iPod. He sat back there, ear-buds in, fiddling with it while she gave him verbal instructions, quietly at first, but then louder when she failed to get through over the music. Funny how rich older folks end up in the same position as children when presented with the new. That's not meant as a criticism. Childlike is fine as far as I'm concerned, implying discovery of the new. Childish, though, is quite another thing.

Small comments are telling. As they stepped out, he said to me to be back at 4:00 pm, ready for the trip home. She said, sotto voce, words to the effect that he loves his brother-in-law....for the first two hours. Funny, really. Families are the same everywhere.

Photo by me.

Also published here. [link]

Speak when you are spoken to.

2010-01-01T10:20:00.007-05:00

If I had to train limousine drivers, I would start with what not to do. At the top of that list is not talking too much. In fact, less is almost always best, and the way to remember this is to only speak when spoken to.

Of the many differences between a taxi and a Town Car, the most important is the driver. Whereas taxi drivers can often be unstoppable chatterboxes, regaling their customers with whatever leaks from their brain, the chauffeur should be more circumspect. Pleasant and responsive, for sure, but restrained and calm too.

The way I look at it is that the customer is unlikely to have any interest in me. They probably think they know all about me anyway, or all they need to know. To them, I'm simple to categorize: Wombat's a limo driver. Seems like a good guy. And that's it.

So I try to look at it from their point of view, which is to say how everyone likes to look at the world: through their own biases and interests. When they do talk, I remove myself from the conversation, instead reflecting back to them the point of their comment, or feed on the substance behind the question. Being transparent is my aim.

Once you try it a few times, it's easy. Unless they specifically ask for personal experience, I remove the personal pronoun from my speech. Taxi drivers are all about the "I". Limo drivers are about the "you". We should affirm, or provide information, or ask pithy follow-ups or (with the right person) provide a wry comment.

Basically, it's about creating a comfortable experience where, for the length of the ride, they're the boss, and we're the minion.

Pounding the Road

2009-12-30T09:38:00.004-05:00

The days surrounding Christmas were busy. The Boss's Limo Service hasn't seen this amount of activity in many months. His mood is buoyant and drivers are busy figuring the size of the next cheque. Job satisfaction is a nice ideal, but if you're working for minimum wage plus tips, it's about the money.

Not to say we don't do the very best we can by all customers. This Christmas season was punctuated by extreme weather in those places from which people fly to Florida, which means flight delays and messed-up schedules all around. And just when it looks like calm will return, some insane Nigerian fool with a dose of Yemeni bomb-pants decides to blow up a plane.

As a result, the charade of airport security moves one step further into the looking glass. Now we have snow delays and underpants inspection delays, which would have been avoided had anyone in charge taken seriously their oath to defend the American people as the Constitution requires. [link]

Amazingly, all our customers (so far) found themselves a chauffeur waiting at our designated meeting points at all the regional airports. They might have been six hours late, and sometimes folks expecting a Town Car found themselves in a stretch limousine, but it all got done.

The big question is whether business will slide back into its normally torporous state or if this is the start of something big.

Bang, You're Dead. Or not.

2009-12-28T22:03:00.005-05:00

Far and away the best part of driving is discovering gratitude. I wouldn't want the life of the captains of industry we drive to and from airports; being a drunk family guy getting kicks from boffing the next-door neighbour's wife is a turn-off; and crazy hyper people for whom everything is a personal insult make me laugh.

Life is not perfect, and the sooner we accommodate that fact, the calmer we'll all be.

Which leads me to Mr Davie. Mr Davie is man who lives hereabouts, a man who retired to Florida when his wife passed away ten years ago. Like many men of his age, his life pretty well fell apart when the mother of his three children succumbed to cancer.

But he carried on, living in a simple old-style condo building, in a ground-floor place with a nice view of an artificial lake.

I met one of his sons first, about a year ago. All the kids (who are grown with children of their own) live in northern states, all separated by hundreds of miles. This son was a copper, a good guy, the sensible beating heart of the country. I drove him to the airport after a visit because his father took ill. Mr Davie recovered. The son and I connected.

Then, about two months ago, the daughter turned up. She arrived one Friday night, and I drove her to her father's place. All the way she texted, talked or emailed, a tribute to the power of 3-G networks. But she was super-pleasant, and took time to explain that she was taking her father back to her state the following Monday after a doctor's appointment, and that the news might not be good.

Assigned the job on Monday, I was trepidatious. But I needn't have worried. Mr Davie (my first actual meeting) was frail, but in good spirits. Maybe it's body language, but I liked him immediately. Although he talked but a little, he clearly knew about business, and life, and knew that life is a funny old journey.

He came back two weeks after that, with his youngest son. While the son fetched the luggage, Mr Davie and I had a good talk. He was in a wheelchair and tired from the journey. But he wanted to go home, to be in his own place.

The Boss hasn't heard since. I hope he never does. I like the idea of Mr Davie happily passing his days looking over the lake.

Mons Venus

2009-12-22T14:26:00.011-05:00

Robert is a big man, not particularly tall, but with a substantial gut. It's more than a gut. It looks large enough to sustain life without Robert's internal utilities - blood supply and the like - but for now, it's still Robert's gut.

Midnight on Saturday night and Robert is at his usual place, directing traffic in the car park at Mons Venus. The small area in front and the smaller area to the side of the club are full, so newcomers park at the pizza place next door. I sense some secret arrangement for this, the kind of secret arrangement that surrounds strip clubs everywhere. Beneath the surface there's way more going on than you can see.

I turn up with my group of ten revelers in a stretch limousine. They're drunk: we have just come from the Seminole Hard Rock Casino and Hotel (to give it it's full title.) More accurately, the men are drunk. The women are variously between sobriety and sleep.

As my charges head off to ogle womanflesh, Robert approaches and introduces himself. Yes, we have met before, but I'm not sufficiently regular to merit a piece of his memory. He eyes me up and down, and politely requests a quick removal of my car-park-blocking hunk of metal. It's midnight, you see, peak time at a Tampa strip club, and it's no time for damn limousines to block things up.

Keeping out of the way is part of the driver's art. Robert quickly assesses that I am on his side, and helps make sure I don't scrape the beast while I am backing and filling. I end up in front of the pizza place, close enough to keep my people happy, far enough away to keep Robert happy.

One of my couples comes back to the limo. They don't want to pay the twenty dollar cover. Last time they were here, they say, women entered free. A sign of the times, I think. But he was in a mood, and wanted to play. I didn't tickle his funny bone, so he started with Robert. The man was a happy drunk, and wanted to make body contact. Rubbing elbows, elaborate ghetto handshakes, bear hugs. Everything was fair game. But then he started in a little too rough. I could see Robert's brain working, fighting the instinct to knock this dope to the pavement, overcoming that thought with the logic that he's just another idiot customer wanting to bond with his fellow man.

By wrestling the car-park guy at Mons Venus.

The couple decided they would pay the forty dollars to watch the girls inside, so left Robert and me behind. I watched Robert in the gaps between pages of my book. He had the look of a man who has seen much.

Venezuela

2009-12-20T14:56:00.005-05:00

This weekend is awful for anyone flying from the east coast of the US to anywhere else. Snow in the form of blizzards shut airports from Washington DC (Dulles and Reagan National) to Boston Logan. The knock-on effect has been awesome in its scale.

Weather is one thing, but political stuff-ups are another. Planning to collect a customer from Miami International last night, I lobbed in the carpark at 8:30 for his 8:15 pm scheduled arrival. It always take a minimum of thirty minutes to clear immigration and customs at MIA, so I was in good time.

Too good a time, as the monitors now showed the flight from Venezuela arriving at 10:30 pm. Great. Two hours and fifteen minutes late.

My natural instinct is to work forward to get a rough idea of my "get to bed" hour. If he arrives at 10:30, thirty minutes for I and C, fifteen minutes faffing around getting to the car, three and a half hours to his house, get gas, clean interior of limo, return limo, drive home. 04:30. Yet more good news.

My customer was in decent humour, and we chatted about his day.

"Everything is rotten in Venezuela" he said, a native himself and so qualified to talk. "Nobody cares. It's a ruin".

After mulling on that for the drive back, my 4:30 am crawl into bed didn't seem so bad.

Late night chat

2009-12-19T11:38:00.003-05:00

At 4:00 am this morning:

Does that include your tip?

No sir, it does not.

So you're telling me it doesn't include the tip?

That's correct, Todd.

I need to tip you then?

Only if you think my service merits it.

Oh. Yes. You're right. Here's fifty bucks. Are we good?

Thank you very much, that's very generous.

I'd like to see the server's reaction to a 3.5% tip next time he sups in a restaurant.

Season

2009-12-17T10:37:00.003-05:00

The Season is in full flight now. The Tropical Midwest doubles in population, what with Snowbirds, tourists and those visiting friends and relatives.

Season is variably described as the period between Thanksgiving and Mother's Day, or from Halloween to Easter. You get the picture.

The way I describe it is more practical. More experiential, if you like. When it takes me more than twenty-five minutes to drive five miles, it's Season.

It's Season.

7-Eleven

2009-12-15T07:35:00.003-05:00

Becoming a connoisseur of gas stations is one more benefit of driving limousines. Not just gas stations, but the convenience stores that accompany them are part of my extensive experience. Circle K, On the Run, am/pm; I have shopped and bought coffee in them all. The King of the Conveniences (here in the United States) is 7-Eleven, the store with the opening hours right in the name.

The green and red monster is now my service station of choice, because they seem to have the cheapest gasoline. I guess they have buying power over the distributors, being as big as they are, but it might also be that the fuel is a way to get you into their stores. The gas is a loss-leader so they can sell you lots of other crap.

And crap it is. My observation of my fellow 7-Eleven customer is that they are in a hurry, they smoke, they drink and they eat a rotten diet. We need to face facts and note that there is nothing - not one thing - in those stores that could be considered a nutritious foodstuff. It's all high-calorie, high fat, high carb, low end of the food-chain junk. And you have to line up to get some.

Horrible working hours, long days and an inability to eat on the job all make for some bad eating habits. That's my excuse for past explorations into the nether world of convenience store food, an apt description, because I am certain that much of the protein comes from the nether regions of animals. But I have forsworn that stuff in the interests of living beyond fifty.

The inescapable truth is this: Poor people pay the most for the worst food. That's just the way it is.

Also published here. [link]

First Time

2009-12-09T09:29:00.011-05:00

A new customer is good for both me and The Boss. The benefit to The Boss is clear, but for me it's an opportunity to focus on what makes a good (or even, ahem, excellent) chauffeur.

Because we're minimum-wage folks, we work for tips, and the time-honored way to garner a good tip is to meet and exceed the customer's expectations. First impressions are as important as conventional wisdom suggests, so I am hyper-aware of making a good impression in those minutes immediately after meeting the new person.

But sometimes the relationship goes the other way. The customer can make a big impression on me, as happened Tuesday morning. Collecting the gentleman from his comfortable established home, I knew something was up when, after some perfunctory chit-chat, he said;

You know, Wombat, Tiger Woods has fucked it for the rest of us, that prick.

Firstly, use of the word 'fuck' puts me, the driver, on a different relationship footing with a customer. Secondly, what on earth was he talking about? After a second, I figured it out - he was telling me that he was an enthusiast for adultery.

Thus began an hour-long tour of this man's life, from his financial woes to his infidelities. He talked at length about his family, especially his many children and his many, many grandchildren. Retired from business, Facebook is his new enthusiasm, a marvel that allows him to keep up with his many widely distributed neices and nephews, although some of them "...find it a bit creepy" that he's so intent on being their friend.

But the focus of his thinking was his trips to Havana. My man could only be described as a part-time sex-tourist, waxing fond about his past visits to Cuba for the enthusiastic, fruity and cheap (cheap!) prostitutes. Apparently, once you find the right guy down there (a man he oddly referred to as "...my John...") all doors are open. John (or The John) knows the way around obstacles to free love created by the fact that "the government owns everything down there, you know". Which would be at least a partial description of a communist dictatorship.

Whenever someone decides to spill their guts to me, a perfect stranger, I wonder why. Is is because the Town Car has a kind of confessional effect? Am I like a priest because the customer cannot see my face? Or is it something about me that encourages them to tell all?

I'm going to ask this nice man soon, because he invited me to a week in Havana in February. We'll have time to talk then.

For a more detailed description of my new buddy's enthusiasms. [link]

Fast Cars

2009-12-07T20:46:00.004-05:00

Today, after I collected my customer from Orlando Airport.

Wombat, how long do you think to my place?

Oh, with the traffic about two hours and fifteen.

Okay. I'm really keen to get home. If you do it in one hour forty-five, there's a hundred in it for you..........but, you know, don't lose your licence.

*bangs head against steering-wheel*

Amusement

2009-12-04T10:09:00.015-05:00

The time evenings unravel is around 1:15 am. Sometimes it's earlier, but by that point any simmering differences between folks in the group rise to the surface.

Alcohol is the catalyst. Observing the arc of a night out with people in a limousine teaches you that even the most chummy friends can turn ugly on each other given enough neck-oil. It's sad, in truth, but just another human frailty.

Notwithstanding late-night bickering, I try to find amusement whenever I can. Of course I'm as sober as a Sarasota lawyer at 1:15 am, which gives me an advantage over most of my customers and opportunities to indulge my dark side. Here's a case in point:

If you have rented a large stretched limousine, a Hummer, for example, a recent model will set you back north of $150 per hour. That is $2.50 a minute. Think of it as a Bud Light per minute. This particular night out was organized by a self-made man, an electrical contractor from memory, and he was clearly the Alpha Dog amongst the six couples. We'd been to bars all over the Suncoast, and, as usual, the initial iciness towards me had melted. The mood was happy and festive. Until the 1:15 hour.

Our Alpha decided it was time to settle up the bill to that point. We stopped outside one of his buddies' houses, and he whipped out a wad of cash collected from the players.

How much do I owe you? he asked. I totted it up, and let's say it came to $650 dollars.

He then started counting fifties and twenties into my hand, backwards from $650. Swaying and slurring all the while, he did a pretty good job, although the leap from $610 to $590 took him a lot of mental energy. Why he insisted on counting backwards is a mystery, but backwards was the way he wanted it.

At around $420, someone would come up to him (we were standing at the rear of the limo) and offer him a drink or a cigarette, or the inevitable ongoing argument inside would spill outside and distract him.

He would then take all the money back from me, and start counting down again from $650, only to be interrupted at the $420 mark.

The third time this happened, when he started again he asked how much he owed me to date. $688 I said. He stopped and looked at me.

I thought you said $650?

Yes, but we've been standing here counting money for fifteen minutes, and you now owe me $38 more.

He then started counting backwards from $688.

This went on for forty minutes. I laughed then, and for days after. On the inside, of course.

Also published here. [link]

Clarity

2009-11-26T16:09:00.006-05:00

How wonderful it is when people communicate. It's a rough survey, but from my chauffering experience, it appears that the more willing a passenger is to communicate, the more successful they are, at least in business. I imagine it's different in relationships, but possibly not.

A regular customer of The Boss's service is a Snowbird, running his northern United States based business from Florida from November until May. That's a feat by itself. When I knock on his front door to collect him, he's friendly, but direct:

- What's your name?

- I want these two bags in the trunk, and that one in the back seat

- We'll be leaving in less than ten minutes

Once we're in the car, he continues:

- I'm going to Fort Myers airport, Southwest Airlines

- I have six phone calls to make, so that will take most of the journey

- I'm not an old lady, so please drive crisply.

Perfect. Just perfect. If only they were all so clear. I am not a mind-reader.

Speed Up

2009-11-22T17:03:00.008-05:00

The Boss told me that one of his customers had called him to complain about me. Great, I thought, a bollocking is all I need about now. Can you guess what the gentleman complained about? Apparently the last time I drove him I was too slow, and that I need to step it up if we're to retain his business.

You must be kidding.

This is the chauffeur's dilemma in a nutshell: divining what the customer is thinking, and figuring a way to make it happen.

The captains of industry we drive are often in a hurry. They believe they can arrive at Tampa Airport forty minutes before the flight leaves, and catch the thing at a stroll. Actually, they plan to arrive forty minutes before the scheduled departure, allow ten percent less than normal for the journey to the airport in one of our Towncars, and make that their pickup time.

They then walk out of their house or office fifteen minutes after that arranged time, fully expecting bods like me to pick up the slack on the highway. It's a joke.

Any idiot can drive fast. It's in your driver's licence, look, it says "The holder is now allowed by the state to put the accelerator flat to the floor and go like the wind." The problem is that my job is to get you where you are going safely, expeditiously and comfortably. If you have a death-wish or want these priorities re-ordered you have to tell me. I am not a mind reader.

When it's obvious that the heavy breather sitting behind is frustrated with me obeying posted speed-limits (body language tells all) I might bring my speed back down just a fraction. Or I move over a lane behind someone slow. Sometimes this insolence will force them to speak up, saying something like:

"I'm in a hurry, you know,"

Or

"My flight leaves at ten o'clock".

If there's snark in my veins at this time, I'll say to them:

"Sir, I can get you there as fast as lightning, but I need your assurance that you will pay my speeding fine and any legal fees".

That shuts 'em up.

Lord help any one of their minions who suggests he disregard the SEC or whatever agency regulates his business. Why, that's outrageous you ask him to break the law. But if you're a dumb sedan driver running I-75 day in and day out, well, that's fine.

Fuck them. And fuck that piss-weak jerk who wasn't man enough to say to my face that I should drive with a little more brio. No, big asshole had to call the boss, and bitch mano-a-girlo.

Pfft.

Also published here. [link]

Coked Up

2009-11-17T10:37:00.005-05:00

A requirement for being a limo driver is the ability to stay awake at all hours. This is such a weird business, crazy busy for a few days, and then dead as a dodo for the next few. If you like stability and a regular schedule, this game is not for you.

Weekends are the worst. Because the summer was so slow, we (the drivers) are all keen to get working. To do so, we sometimes need to minimize our sleep, which in practice can mean finishing a job at, say, 2:00 am, only to have a pickup at 6:00 am. I have done that kind of turn-around for three nights straight, which is a kind of torture. In fact isn't sleep deprivation and time-shifting specifically defined as torture?

Having worked back of the clock for much of my working life, night work can be okay, but it needs to be on a regular basis. One or two nights without sleep is way worse than five or six, because the body adapts. You're a zombie when you are awake during the day, but at least you acclimate to the wee hours.

The big danger is falling asleep when driving. I nearly did it a couple of days ago. Everyone knows that feeling when you get the nods on the road. Freeways are the worst, because the white lines become hypnotic, lulling the brain into some kind of low brainwave activity. It's deadly. [link]

If you can't stop and take a break - as I cannot with a customer who has to get somewhere - there are few choices. Coffee, of course, if you can. Pinching one's legs works for a while. Talking to the customer is good. And if all else fails, I bring out the big guns; Coca-Cola, with its giant shot of sugar and caffeine does the trick.

It has probably saved my life, it's that good.

Also published here. [link]

Fiery Wedding

2009-11-08T21:06:00.008-05:00

Autumn in Florida is the time for weddings, good news for those of us in the making-the-fairy-tale-come-true business. Actually, most of the weddings I see are not about the fairy-tale. They're often pragmatic affairs, almost to the point of appearing to be an exercise in going through the motions. Maybe that reflects more down-to-earth brides, but whatever it is, the emotional energy is often wound way down.

Saturday I drove a stretched limousine for a wedding, one of the most happy I have seen. A clue that both the wedding and the marriage will work out okay is when I knock at the door (to let the client know that I'm there, ahead of time) and the bride is still in civilian clothes. With a veil. Normally, it might be a red flag, an indication that everything is running behind. But I was early, and when she emerged with her bridesmaids right on time, smiling and calm, I knew everything was fine. A low maintenance bride who takes time to say hello (after my obligatory compliment about how beautiful she looks) is a gift.

Absence of a photographer at this point is a bonus. Photographers often run weddings, which is a pity, because the spontaneity of the day is lost when you have a martinet with a Nikon bossing everyone around. Word of advice to prospective brides: you'll have a much happier day, and get much more interesting wedding photos if you instruct your photographer to simply follow, snap, and refrain from interfering. He or she is there to record the day, not organize it.

During the church ceremony, a fire truck rolled up. Turns out that the groom was a firefighter, and his (on duty) colleagues were there to say hello. Nice touch. A photographer was present by this time, and everyone had great fun having their picture taken with newly married couple all over the truck. See, weddings don't need to be stuffy and formal. It's about celebration, just like these folks demonstrated.

We did head off for formal photos, but by that time the alcohol was flowing, and everyone (read: groomsmen) was pretty loose. That makes a difference. The wedding party participants who forget about themselves and simply keep the newly-weds smiling and laughing, doing the little jobs willingly, truly make a difference. Selfless and humorous groomsmen can literally make a wedding.

The last item for most weddings is dropping everyone at the reception. I was kinda bummed not to be able to spend more time with both the bride (a doll) and the groom (who was polite and relaxed). Good people, great (simple) wedding, and, I am predicting, fantastic marriage.

Also published here. [Link]

Halcyon Days

2009-11-06T09:57:00.006-05:00

A certain kind of customer strides up to me in the airport, hands me his grip and keeps right on without saying a word. I watch him walk towards the baggage belt, stop, pull out his cellphone, and begin fiddling. The attitude is pretty clear from the start - their chauffeur is only nominally a person, and more valuable as a combination hatstand, closet, porter, Sherpa, mule and driver.

It can come as a surprise. I'll be standing there holding my welcome-board at the base of the escalators. They make no sign of recognition, no verbal or other greeting as they approach. I will not have met them before, so they recognize me from (obviously) the uniform and their name that I'm holding up. Literally without a word, I have had these strangers dump their overcoat, carry-on, camera, computer bag and purse into my waiting arms, and string a tote over my shoulder. So much for my smile and prepared name-specific welcome.

"Hello Mr Peters, welcome to Florida" gets lost amidst their disgorgement.

The name for that kind of customer is extinct. They're a product of buoyant times, when everyone has a job and every bank is lending. There's a PhD to be had correlating money supply growth with arrogance in limousine customers. I'm sure there's a link. Now that car companies are run by governments and employment's over ten percent, even the most boorish of bulls have had their horns clipped.

Impoliteness like that is rare, in my experience. Most of our customers are a delight, particularly the regulars. They're sweet to the point of being embarrassing, undemanding, and simply easy to deal with. Most of them even remove their own trash from the car when they leave, they're that nice.

Extinct is too strong a word for the man in the airport. {This behaviour is not limited to men, by the way. Women are equally capable of high-handedness. I use 'men' in the general sense.} They're really only lying dormant, waiting for the economic winter to thaw and the first shoots of spring to launch them back into their old habits.

Here's hoping.

Also published here. [link]

Bomb Canada

2009-11-05T11:51:00.006-05:00

Midweek limousine runs are a bonus. They're even better if it's a bachelorette party, especially if the bride is under age sixty. Hey, it's Florida. Ya gotta look on the bright side when there is one. I only realized how old we are around here when a friend visited recently. The first thing she said was "Where are all the people without silver hair?"

Anna Maria pickup at 7:00 pm, then dinner at St Armand's, then Siesta Key for hijinks; that was the plan. All simple enough on the surface, but the happy face soon developed cracks.

First, the money. The Boss always quotes an hourly rate for a minimum of two hours. So when the bridesmaid organizer stated she'd been quoted a fixed seven hour price for a dollar figure substantially below normal, I smelled a grifter. A Canadian grifter, which makes it worse, because I like Canadians.

Second, the female card. Sweetheart, you are cute, but this is business. Claiming you're just being a ditzy girl might work sometimes, but I've seen way too much of that variety of manipulation. I'd rather drive off and do without the money. But I phoned The Boss to resolve the money problem and he compromised. Great.

Third, the adding heads game. My limousine is legally limited to ten passengers. When you book, and say you only have eight, we assume you're as good as your word. When thirteen lovely Canadian ladies turn up, forgive me for blanching a little. I could have brought the bigger vehicle - at no more cost because it's midweek - but no, it just gives you a reason to complain about the lack of room.

Fourth, the extra time. Of course you're having fun dancing and drinking, and you naturally pray for the night not to end. That's possible, at forty dollars per half hour, and, believe me, I can last longer than you. But when you start to say that you're running out of cash, expect not to find me accommodating.

Fifth, the urination. Picture Gulf of Mexico Drive, Longboat Key. The time is 3:15 am. Every ten minutes, two or three of my 'ladies' want a comfort stop. When I point out that it is indeed Longboat Key at 3:15 am and that there are no public facilities available, swearing at me doesn't help.

Sixth, the tip. My unfailing good humor, smiling accession to every request, relentless cleaning, obsessive polishing, general professional demeanor and finding of private spots to piss apparently don't count. Exactly fifteen dollars.

What's that, about seventeen-fifty Canadian? Thanks. I'll just go clean up your puke now.

Also published here.

Hallowe'en

2009-11-03T10:52:00.005-05:00

There is a street in our town in which four houses in a row contain four women. They're all married, all mothers but one, all thirtysomethings, all attractive - and they all have enhanced breasts. I know this is true because I have seen all the women together, and let's just say that none of them went for subtlety. Spotting the decoy amongst the ducks ain't that hard.

Completely brazen about it, they were out on the town on the Saturday of Hallowe'en, flaunting their curves. Being neighbors and plastic warriors, they call themselves the Breastford Wives. I smell the odor of some group couplings amongst this lot, but what they do with their Tupperware is their business.

I spent time chatting with the husband of the woman last to visit the cosmetic surgeon. I asked him what he liked most about his wife's new assets.

Well, he said, it puts the lie to the saying that more than a mouthful is a waste. And then there's the smell.

The smell, I asked?

Oh, for sure. For the first two weeks they have that new car smell. I tell you, it's like being in heaven.

Also published here. [Link]

Harley Sunday

2009-11-02T01:02:00.007-05:00

The milder autumn air brings out the Peter Fonda in Harley owners, especially when it's Sunday. Sunday's the day that men with a gut and a dream fire up the iron horse and join a few buddies for a drive around, just for the hell of it. And why not? The sound of that slow-revving vee-twin, the feel of the air through one's bald spot, the companionship - what better way to celebrate the land of liberty than to exercise one's freedoms and drink some beer.

Unfortunately, the land of liberty also houses the dark side of freedom, which is entitlement. In the case of Harleyistas, they all think they're entitled to disregard generally accepted rules of the road, and do whatever the fuck they feel like.

Groups of them chug along in the fast lane at 30 mph. Larger groups chug along blocking all the lanes. Pairs of them flip bitches (do U-turns) wherever and whenever they choose. Bunches of them have long, tedious conversations at stop lights, then take ten minutes to acknowledge the green, pull the clutch, find first, rev a little, gently ease the clutch....oh, and look, the sodding light's red again.

The ubiquity of bumper stickers urging us to "watch for motorcycles" evidences either their popularity or the fact that cars run them over. A lot. My money's on the latter. It's dangerous to be out there in anything but an automobile, and emergency rooms and graveyards are full of individuals proving it. But these latter-day Easy Riders don't help themselves by behaving so poorly. I applaud them having a fun day out, if that constitutes their pursuit of freedom. Their disregard of everyone else, however, dissipates the goodwill from people like me who use the road to make a living.

So, my dear two-wheel enthusiast, when you and your mates are cruising down the Skyway Bridge, ten abreast at twenty under the minimum, don't be surprised if I exercise a little of my own freedom and rub your back tire with my bumper. It's all good, right? And if the thought of that doesn't please you, move over and let me through. The thought of having to clean pieces of your pancreas outta my tread doesn't make me that happy either.

Hit a Hog Day. That's what Sunday should be called.

Also published here.

Welcome Sign

2009-10-29T10:52:00.005-04:00

You have probably seen me at the airport, hanging around the arrivals area, holding a sign showing my customer's name. I might be tall or short; skinny, muscular or portly; smoothly dressed or somewhat rumpled. The likelihood is that I am older rather than young, grey-haired more than colored, measured more than peppy. I am overwhelmingly male, glued to my cellphone and almost always tired.

The driving job isn't my first choice. I might have a buddy in the business who needed some help one weekend...and I stayed. It's possible that I saw the potential in a buoyant economy and bought a limousine with a down payment and a dream. Retirement might have bored me rigid, and the idea of some extra money (and tips!) appealed to me (and my wife.) Or I could enjoy the driving, the hours, the observation of human nature, the variety, and just not being stuck indoors enough to want to make it a long-term job.

After around two years you start to think you've seen it all. That's a mistake. There will always be new ways for people to surprise you; incredible, unbelievable behaviour that will make great tales for the telling. But somewhere in there you begin to notice patterns, to recognize situations as echoes of days past - this kind of misunderstanding is best resolved in a particular way, that type of customer is actually asking for somemething different than he or she verbalizes, and we both know it. Experience begins to guide you when uncertainty looms.

Mostly I like people, and want to help them through. My temperature might rise when conflict arises, but I know that it's overwhelmingly likely to be in the customer's mind than in the way I carried their bag. I probably dream of a week of early to bed and breakfasts there too, but start to miss the road after two days of that. The money sucks, The Boss acts weird, nobody tips anymore, these cars aren't running right, the cops hate me, I'm hungry, Starbucks sucks, I miss my family....and yet I'm still here, in the monkey suit, holding up my sign, looking for Mr Smith.

Also published at The 941.

Fame

2009-10-27T15:47:00.002-04:00

I'm famous!

The local alternative paper (read: lefty haven) publishes my posts under a (different) pseudonym. This week, I'm in print.

Yay me.

You Too

2009-10-20T23:06:00.007-04:00

I'm sorry. If you don't know that the lead singer of U2's name is "Bonn-Oh", not "Bone-Oh" you are not real fans. Fuck me. Dilettantes in pop culture make me wanna puke.

Sorry sir, may I open the champagne for you?

You see the kind of dual life I lead, being appalled most of the time, sickenly sycophantic the next. You'd be the same if you were surviving on tips.

The night of the U2 concert in Tampa was long and messy. Every limousine within 150 miles was out, and the other 69,000 people drove their cars. Raymond James stadium, home of an amateur football team called the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was chock-a-block full for the night, and that was just the performers' egos.

My people were early mid-aged lawyer types, overfed and undermannered. Snark aside, they were reasonably polite and not at all a problem, but who wants to hear about mild-mannered Richy Riches daring to live large at a Rock Concert for the night?

However, one of their number was a trouble-maker from the start. As I later discovered, he was an ex-fighter of some sort, the kind with a giant body, peanut nuts and dino-brain. Better living through chemistry, apparently. Why anyone pays to see artificially-grown men bash each other is beyond me, but I bore the weight of his 'roid rage that night. Except when he was being nice. And there he goes morphing into a prick again.

Oaves suck.

Where was I? Oh, that's right. Channelside in Tampa, after the U2 show, with a drug-addled lunatic and his nouveau riche friends. Whatever. Another show, another dollar.

Alcoholica

2009-10-06T21:46:00.005-04:00

Metallica played the St Pete Times Forum Saturday night, a giant thrill for local metal fans. The hard rockin' hall-of-famers aren't familiar to me, so I figured it would be best to be prepared for anything when I drove eight die-hards to the concert.

One lesson one learns quickly in the limo game is the ancient one of not judging a book by its cover. My customers for the night might have looked like well-used paperbacks, but who the hell am I to judge? They were polite and friendly, and although I couldn't figure out just why their teenage children were coming, seemed like first-rate parents too.

Look, it's easy to be a snob about these things. Metal bands are a mystery to me, but then Scarlatti is probably a joke to them, unless there's an Italian hair band of that name floating about the place. Customers are customers, and as I say to The Boss, they all get the best treatment until their behaviour dictates otherwise.

Tampa is a dozy kind of place, with many one-way streets, and evidence of bored uninterest from the city fathers (and female mayor) that a clean sweep would rectify. Public performance venues like the SPTF are used all the time, and yet the organization around parking, traffic flow and (especially!) limousines is abysmal. The cops do their job as well as you'd expect, but the feeling one is left with is that administrators could care less what happens when the sun sets and they're comfortably ensconced somewhere else having dinner with a lobbyist.

That's a whole other issue.

A driving gig to Tampa for a concert like this is about as good as it gets, because everyone's in a good mood. They're also deaf and swaying when they come out, but that's fine too; I just turn up the heat, and they're all asleep by the time we've hit I-75 southbound.

The real fun lies in the time between when the show ends and the customers find me. Metallica girls are given to taking their tops off, I understand, an outstanding turn of events. When the sweaty crowd is melting out of the arena, there's plenty of eye-candy to keep a bloke occupied, even if they're with scary looking dudes.

They're probably shit-scared of my tie.

Secret Service

2009-10-01T12:06:00.007-04:00

There I was, in the restaurant carpark, waiting for my customer to finish dinner when an SUV sandwich arrived - four Suburbans between two cop cruisers. There was no squealing of tires or blaring of sirens, but it was clear that Something Important was happening. "Huh", I thought, Sarasota's biggest moment in three months might just be happening before my eyes.

Out sprung a dozen or more steely-type guys in dark suits, all looking at what security people call "The Perimeter." (Note my hip lingo.) I was on the dead side of The Perimeter, unable to see what was happening at the restaurant's entrance. Apparently Someone Important alighted one of the monster vehicles and was escorted in with a few hangers-on. All I saw was the back of a guy's head, a guy with white hair.

Frankly, I was miffed. Here was I, sitting in my Town Car in the forecourt, chatting on my cellphone, and the tuff guys barely gave me a look. I could have been a nut with a gun on a mission, deserving of a bit o' roughing up. Actually, the fact they ignored me is testimony to their judgement, because A) I'm not a starfucker, and B) my friend on the phone was way more interesting than some B-lister with over-the-top stalker protection.

After a while, I told my friend what had happened. She speculated who was likely to have a police escort and heavy duty security. We concluded it was unlikely to be anyone Hollywood, nor anyone businessy. I thought of Bill Gates, but I know he's very low-key. My best guess was Governor Crist.

Eventually, I got out of the car to stretch a take a walk. A television camera crew and their cub reporter argued over sightlines. Bottled water came out for the suits. Restaurant customers (including mine) were nowhere to be seen, apparently held hostage inside. Good for me; I was on hourly pay. A local cop stood nearby, so I asked the question. Suddenly it all made sense.

My clues to my friend on the phone were as follows: The number 42. Ladies' knickers hitting the floor all over the SunCoast. Politician. White hair. Left of center. Unsure of the meaning of the word 'is'.

Champagne Ruined

2009-09-22T09:47:00.011-04:00

Without any justification, I'm a champagne snob. An ex-girlfriend introduced me to the wonders of French bubbly, a moment I shall never forget. It was non-vintage Moët et Chandon that first sip, just like the bottle in the picture. Oh, the nose; WOW, the bubbles; and OMG the taste. I'm sure Taylor, our local wine guruette, would use more technically appropriate language, but there is nothing else that compares to champagne from Champagne.

Which is why it pains me so to see this mixing of the best of France, and the best of Florida. Sacré bleu! Whatever where they thinking? The young couple were just that weekend engaged, and I was driving them to their celebratory dinner at Euphemia Haye.

Bravo, congratulations, good for you and all that. But why did they have to ruin the champagne with a Pepsi product?

It's enough to make me want a martini.

Beach Butt Bingo

2009-09-19T12:14:00.009-04:00

With the limo trade as dead as a dodo, I have time to spend frivolously at the beach. It's a balance - my tan improves, my bank balance declines. That's the Zen of Chauffeurdom. I hope business will pick up sometime soon, because if not, I will have to look for something more.

However, in the dying weeks of summer before the start of Season, a few lazy days on Florida's best sand won't hurt too much. Fingers crossed.

A few months ago, I noticed the above sign at my favorite local swimming spot. The City erected them adjacent to carpark paths to the beach, with receptacles for cigarette trash attached to the poles. Hooray! Few things piss me off more than lying down on my towel only to find myself in an ash heap of butts left by some inconsiderate asshole.

Now I'm not averse to people smoking should they choose to. But lazy douchebags who have neither consideration for their fellow beach-goer nor the law truly cheese me off. How difficult is it to collect the product of your habit, stick it in your sunbag, and cart that shit off the beach?

Apparently it's beyond a lot of them. Just this morning, after a few laps between the buoys, I was relaxing on Lido Beach. Groups of Girl Scouts were all over, picking up (with gloved hands) butts and other beach detritus to "...keep the world clean". So it's come to this: children now volunteer as garbage collectors to do the work of indolent, selfish adults.

Butts are not bio-degradable.

Alzheimers

2009-09-13T21:56:00.005-04:00

If he asked me ten times, he asked me forty. Sir, we're in Florida, and I'm driving you to your condo. The old guy whose ride didn't work out ended up with me, to our mutual discomfort. He thought he was in Connecticut, having just left Florida, but I was definitely in Florida. And I had the humidity to prove it.

Because times are slow in the limo game, being on call 24/7 is now a part of the gig. It's somewhat like begging; take what you can get, and always have your hat out. We're better dressed than most beggars, and we brush our teeth, but we're basically in the same game. If you feed at the bottom, be prepared for shit to fall on you from above.

That was how I ended up with this poor disoriented man. The trained folks who normally look after befuddled oldsters couldn't turn up, so minimum wage dozy me had to look after this man who should never, ever be left alone. The Boss is unable to say no, and I'm obliged to say yes. That's how modern business works.

Fortunately, the ride was short, and I had the son's far-away number. I called him five times in twenty minutes attempting to allay the old guy's concerns about where I was taking him, who would be there to meet him, and where are we again?

Each time, my guy said "That was Frank. He's my brother".

In reality, that was Robert. He's his son.

Get used to it. The dumbest generation in history, the baby boomers, is coming to a town near you. Decades of drugs, booze, therapy and self-indulgence are gonna land smack bang in your lap.

At least I'm getting $7.21 per hour. How much will they pay you?

Grouper Ranch

2009-09-11T12:44:00.009-04:00

Prostitution is prohibited in Florida, not that you'd know. Driving into town along the main road from the north, the choice of short-term dates is extensive. You can have short girls, tall girls, white girls, black girls, old girls, young girls and girls who might not necessarily be girls.

Most of the action happens after sundown, but there are a suspiciously large number of ladies waiting at bus-stops during the day. I guess sexual urge is time independent. It might be my imagination, but there appear to be more ladies plying their trade lately. Presumably, tough times lead to tough decisions, with sometimes equally tough consequences.

Limousine customers ask me to find them hookers from time to time. I'm not averse to helping them out, but it's not that simple. We can't just cruise up and down pro-row in a thirty-foot long limousine all night, sidewalk shopping. In police parlance that's called cruising and my name becomes John.

What I should to is some research ahead of time, talk to some of the women, take phone numbers, check out what individual girls look like, what they charge and so on. Innocently seeking out a handful of professional contacts makes sense, but what if the cops are mounting a sting that day? If I'm booked, will they believe me that I'm negotiating for my own future customers? And will the charge then escalate from simple procuring to trafficking, or living on immoral proceeds?

I know! I should contact ACORN. Apparently they offer all kinds of advice in this area, and it's taxpayer funded. Excellent.

This keeps getting better. Community organizing takes on an entirely new flavour.

And look, a prostitution sting just days after I wrote this.

Nocturnality

2009-09-09T11:01:00.004-04:00

For a really big night out, locals lust after the big smoke: Tampa. Channelside, Hyde Park, the International Plaza and Ybor City all beckon from just an hour up the road. I forgot the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in that mix, rather a large oversight.

For a limousine company, this could be a gold mine. All these places cater for party-people, and have lots of variety within their precincts. Any one of them can be a great night out destination for a bunch of people, but they're too far away to drive and party. Ergo, limousine. Eight or fifteen people in a stretch can have a ball.

From our point of view, they're pretty good gigs. Although some folks have ideas about visiting two or three, the usual outcome is that they spend all night at one. Sometimes it's fun driving around, checking out different areas. Staying on the move, loading and unloading everyone reduces the boredom factor, but exponentially increases the mess factor.

Sidebar: Every ingress requires a new round of drinks, with the accompanying spillage and glass usage. As well, more street soil is introduced to the limousine's interior, which, of course, I have to clean out at the end of the night. A good night for me means as few ins-and-outs as possible, plastic cups instead of glasses and no visits to the beach. Sugar sand is a bitch in black carpet. End sidebar.

The downside of Tampa nights is the late finish. Limousines alter customers' sense of time, often leading them to stay until closing. Which is fine. But by the time the bars call last drinks at 2:00 am, close the doors at 2:30 am, my people find me and load up by 2:45 am, on the interstate at 3:00 am, drop the last person home at 5:00 am, I gas up and get to the office by 5:45 am, then spend an hour cleaning - well, it's a pretty long night.