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.

Halcyon Days

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]