Overheard

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.

Twisty Ending

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.

Trying Times

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]

Ybor City Animals

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

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

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]

Wise Heads

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

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]

Groups Part 4

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

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]