WEEK TWO: Monday - Attitudes and Asses

My first fare of the day was a guy who was already pissed when he got in the car.  He was a large man, who informed me he had a bad back and this car was too small for him to get in and out of easily.  He said he'd take the ride this time so as not to stiff me, but he'd need a van from now on.  I apologized for his discomfort and told him I would inform dispatch.  He appeared mollified, because he stopped being angry ... and started being condescending.  He told me that after using the service for several years, he knew all the tricks of the trade.  He even saw fit to share some of them with me.  He also told me to ignore the GPS because he knew a better route.  All the while, he punctuated every sentence with "Honey".

Now, I chose to let this slide because I decided that spending an hour and a half in an enclosed space (45 minutes each way to and from the methodone clinic) with a condescending douchebag was better than spending even 5 minutes of it with an angry asshole, and wouldn't you know, by the time I'd dropped him back at his home he was singing an entirely different tune.  As he got out he told me not only that I was a good driver, but that I had a good disposition to boot.  Ask me how rewarding that was.  I left his house feeling that if this whole livery driving thing didn't pan out, I might just have a career as a snake charmer.

Later that day I picked up another man who'd been using the service for years, and who also had a friend who was a driver.  Before he got out he warned me of one of the lesser known occupational hazards of sitting for so long.  I assumed he was about to warn me of the dangers of poor circulation, but I was wrong.  No, he was warning me about hemorrhoids.

Hemorrhoids.

Today a stranger with a club foot warned me to keep an eye out for hemorrhoids.

Remember what I said yesterday about the bizarre level of trust that passengers place in their drivers to get them to their destination safely?  Yeah.  Well.  Apparently that's not the only kind of bizarre trust that occurs between driver and passenger.

And thank god for that.