Surprise!

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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]