How We Roll

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]

Mission Impossible

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]

Pounding the Road

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.

Speed Up

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]