As a taxi driver, you take everyone - from the millionaire businessman catching a flight at the airport to the pensioner asking you to take them as far as $10 dollars will take them.
There is a young disabled guy I have taken a couple of times in my taxi whom I think suffers from cerebral palsy. He is wheelchair bound and also suffers from a speech impairment and is a little difficult to understand. I often see him sitting outside McDonalds in Woden either singing or sitting alongside a poster which reads something along the lines of "House burnt down. Need help". Now I've picked him up from his house in Forrest a few times and it doesn't appear to have burnt down. Sure, he could have moved their after his old house burnt down, but I have my suspicions about him.
Last time I picked him up he was whinging to me about the fact that he didn't have a girlfriend. He said that girls say they will accept him as a friend on facebook but then they don't. I told him that girls were nothing but trouble and that he needn't worry about. Then he posed me the question, "Why are people so mean?" I responded that sometimes people are mean but he shouldn't worry about it. The life he leads seems pretty depressing, sitting outside Woden McDonalds asking for money can't be all that fulfilling. Maybe he does need a girlfriend. What he could do with her in the bedroom is somewhat limited...as is the conversation so I don't like his chances.
I picked up another guy in Civic over the weekend who was a little bit of a dodgy character. He asked me to do a set fare of $35 to Dunlop, the usual cost would have been $50. Set fares are actually illegal in the ACT, but I agreed because I had already waited half an hour for a fare and it was likely that the next taxi driver would have agreed. He got into the cab and said, "Ï don't want to go home, my Mum is going to yell at me."
"Why?"
"I lost $6,000 and my Mum knows about because she checked my account".
"Did you lose it gambling?"
"No. I went to buy some 2kgs of pot off a guy. He took the $6,000 from me, went inside and I never saw him again. Probably jumped the fence out the back."
"Did you know the guy?"
"Yeah, I've sold to him before. He said he wanted to meet at his mate's house. Mate, I could have made $11,000 from the deals I had set up."
He kept on asking me what he should do. He didn't like me idea of coming clean as that would spell more trouble.
I was a little worried he was going to do a runner on me but he paid. And as he got out of the cab I thought to myself, "Drugs don't pay."
