Early Shift

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.

Afternoons and Evenings

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.

Christmas Eve

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.

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]

Into the Unknown

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]