Pissing on cars

Doug from outside of Wagga is a character.  He moved to Canberra after his wife landed a very well paying job in the public service.  He sold his farm and absolutely hates Canberra but has to be here because of his wife and kids.  He could have sat and home and been a made man but he choose to go out and do some taxi driving.  Doug hates two things about driving taxis in Canberra: the snobs who ask to be taken to the Hyatt Canberra and the lack on clean and safe public toilets in Canberra.

And you know what happens when you put these two hates together? 

Well, whenever Doug needs to go to the toilet and he is near Civic he swings by the Hyatt and parks his taxi next to an expensive car: a BMW 7 series, An Audi A8 or R8 or a Porsche 911.  He gets out of the taxi and pisses on the driver's side door handle.  He likes to get a full load on there.  But he knows not to piss on Austin Martins.  It will set the alarm off.    

"Take your McBurger, take your Mcfries, and McFuck Off!"

Steve in TX13 had an interesting night on Friday night.  He picked up a male at McDonalds Braddon who asked to be driven to O'Connor.  The guy had some McDonalds with him and was drunk, but still with it.  Steve asked him not to eat the McDonalds in the taxi and the guy reluctantly agreed.  For some reason Steve knew it was going to be a bad fare.  The conversation went a little like this:

Steve: How's your night been?
Male: Crap
Steve: Gee, that's no good.
Male: Women are fucked. Canberra's fucked.  Males are cunts.  It's all just fucked.
Steve:  Gee, mate.  Things aren't that bad.  I think you need to be a little more positive.
Male:  Positive? Nah mate, you can go and get fucked.  You taxi drivers are fucked too.  You don't know the routes, most of you are curry munchers that stink and rip people off.
Steve:  Mate, that's a bit of a generalisation.
Male: Generalisation?  I'm just telling you like it is.  You're a fuck head too.

Steve thought about pulling over and telling him to walk but they were close to the destination so he let it ride.  When they got to the destination, the male pulled out a credit card with pay wave functionality.  Steve tapped in the fare and waved the card.  The transaction went through.  Steve attempted to give the male the receipt but he asked what the fuck he was doing.  Steve said he used pay wave and the payment went through.  The male replied that he had never had that done before and asked to cancel the transaction.  Steve said he couldn't cancel it and that the payment had already been made.  The male started to get angry and demanded he cancel it.  Steve stepped out of the cab and explained that he had pressed the alert button and that the cops would soon be on their way.  The male said he didn't care.  Steve then grabbed his McDonalds with the coke and the male stepped out of the cab.  Steve sized up to the male and the male took a backward step.  Steve then chucked the McDonalds into the bush nearby and then exclaimed "Take your McBurger, take your McFries and McFuck off!" as he hurled his coke down the street.  The male stood there stunned.     

Capel's pot deal

Capel's in his late sixties, loves his whiskey, beer and pot and regularly drives TX666.  He earned his nickname Capel because of his beloved Mazda Capella, a car he has been driving around for over forty years.  He used to own a pub on Groote Island but had to move back to Canberra after his two main clientele: the indigenous and the miners stopped turning up at his pub.  The miners stopped coming because the mine closed down and the indigenous stopped coming because most of them died due to liver disease.

Before moving to open a pub on Groote Island, Capel used to work for the military police.  To meet him now, a relaxed, loving and caring bloke, you would never believe he was part of the military police.  Back in the 1980s, pot growing was rife around Canberra.  Capel was asked one day to be a spotter for a recognisance helicopter mission conducted by the AFP.  The AFP were using military aircraft to conduct their mission.  It was Capel's job to spot pot plantations and mark them on the map.  While hovering above the airspace outside of Canberra, Capel spotted a decent size pot plantation.  He thought about marking it on his map but then he realised he knew how to get there and get the pot.  He kept silent and didn't mark it on his map.

The next weekend, Capel borrowed his mate's Landcruiser and drove out to where he saw the pot plantation.  He loaded up the back of the Landcruiser with marijuana, a year's supply mind you, and drove back to Canberra.  Before leaving, he left a note: "Sorry mate, pigs were on to you, I saved you.  Had to take my fair share."  Capel's never had a deal like that again, and probably never will. 

The Caltex C!nt

There are plenty of people out there who think that taxi drivers are just a step above used car salesman in order of social status.  I often get a remark "Gee mate, you seem intelligent, why are you a taxi driver?"  The simple answer is because I love it.  Studies have actually shown that taxi drivers use their brains quite frequently during a shift - navigating, working out where the work is, calculating change and chatting with customers.  You actually have to have a degree of intelligence to be a taxi driver.  Dumb fucks don't last long as taxi drivers because they can't figure out how to make money or get abused by customers and don't get paid because they take long routes.

My mate in TX 13, Steve, had an interesting experience one night.  He picked up these two guys in the city and recognised one of them as the night owl from the Gunghalin Caltex who regularly served Steve after a fuel up from a late night shift.  He was thinking that this was going to be a good fare.  But his mate, whom I call ASSHOLE in the back, started to give Steve some curry about his existence as a taxi driver.

ASSHOLE:  Mate, you're a white taxi driver, what the fuck are you doing with your life?
Steve: I actually enjoy being a taxi driver.
ASSHOLE: You enjoy it? Dealing with drunk people, people spewing up in your cab.  You can't be fucking serious.

If you've read my earlier blogs you would realise that Steve in TX13 has a take no prisoners attitude to taxi driving.  I was a little surprised when Steve first told me this story that he didn't pull over and make them walk.  For some reason Steve decided to run with it.

Steve:  Yeah mate, I do.  I really enjoy and I make enough to get by.
ASSHOLE:  Well mate, I'm an APS6 doing really important work in the public service.  What the fuck are you doing with your life?
Steve:  Good for you.
ASSHOLE: Hey Barry (the Caltex C!nt), do you think we can break him?
Barry:  No mate, I don't think we can break him.

Break him???  What a pair of assholes.  How weak a human being to have to be to try and break someone.  Oh, ASSHOLE, you think you've made it as an APS6 employee well I've got news for you.  You are a glorified document filer.  You don't actually do any real work in the APS until you make EL1 level.

And yes, Caltex C1nt, we got plans for you.  We are going to break you.  Nothing illegal.  We are going to make your night a misery.

Two years on $90,000 with no work to do.

I spent about six years in the public service and I would have been in the top quartile for laziness.  During my last contract in the public service I would take ten smokos a day, take a week to do half a days work, turn up at 9.30am and leave at 4pm but still say I did an 8 hour day on my time sheet.  Not only did I not have the competence, I had a bad attitude as well.  Had I not of left I would have got myself fired which is no mean feat in the public service.  It is pretty hard to fire someone in the public service.  This is why taxi driving suits me.

We all know that public servants are lazy and wouldn't last a second in the private sector, not only that, but the public service wouldn't know efficiency if it smacked them on the head.  Steve in TX13 has a regular customer called Greg who lives in Holt.  Steve loves in when Greg calls up because he knows he got a $40 "cashy" to the City.  If you don't know what a "cashy" is - google it.  Greg told Steve that he used to be a public servant until he got made redundant.  Greg used to have a public service job in Gladstone and got asked to move to Canberra for a year to do the same job.  He moved and found that after a year he liked it so much that he wanted to stay.  The Government agency brought another guy in to do the same job as Greg and offered Greg another public service job in Gladstone.  Greg told them he wanted to stay so they said okay.  The problem was there was no work for him because it was all given to the new guy.  For the first two weeks, Greg thought it was awesome.  No work to do, getting paid $90,000 a year, take a smoko when he wanted, go for coffees.  All good.  Eventually he started to go insane so he became a movie watcher.  He would go to the movies and watch films three times over.  And you know how long Greg was given no work for before they decided to make him redundant?  Two years.  Yep that's right.  Two years.  Efficiency?  I don't think so.  

The male whore

Remember my mate Steve in TX 13 from Adelaide?  The bloke who got $50 for letting someone smoke in his taxi.  Well he told me a story from his time in Adelaide that had me laughing out loud.  One time he was cruising past some pubs in Adelaide in his taxi hoping for a fare.  Out of the blue, this scruffy mid forties bloke hailed him down, jumped in the taxi and asked to be driven to an address out in the suburbs.  By the way he was talking, the guy was high on something, most likely amphetamines.  He said he was a gigolo by trade and crapped on how he was going to bang this 35 year old blonde hotty who had a husband with a small dick who couldn't satisfy her.  Steve thought this bloke was talking shit.  He was pretty scruffy looking, well past his prime and he was high on something.

They arrived at the address and the scruffy looking bloke said to Steve that the hot blonde's husband was going to pay.  Steve got out of the cab and walked to the front door.  He was thinking if this guy really was a gigolo then the door would be answered by a big fat Samoan women with a beard.  Low and behold, a hot blonde did answer the door and she was every bit as stunning as the scruffy looking bloke had described.  The husband pushed past the blonde and paid for the fare.  Steve looked at him in bewilderment and the scruffy looking bloke gave a pinky finger sign to indicate that the husband had a small dick.

"You overcharged me twenty cents"

A great deal of the taxi work you do in Canberra involves taking public servants to and from meetings and taking them from the airport to their home in the evenings after they've had meetings in urban and remote Australia.  When the government is paying for the taxi ride all public servants want is to get home via the fastest route; price does not matter.  However, there are exceptions to the rule.

One time I took home an employee from the Defence Material Organisation to his apartment on Corranderk St near the City.  He was one of these types that thought he was better than everyone else, especially a taxi driver like myself.  He wasn't interested in chatting; all he wanted was to be taken home.  That's fair enough, I appreciate that sometimes people have long days given they have to get up at 5.00am in the morning don't end up getting home till 9.30pm.  But things started to get interesting when I dropped him off. 

The fare came to $22.70 and I swiped his card on the EFTPOS machine and accidently typed in $22.90 instead of $22.70.  He checked the docket and looked up at the meter.  The conversation went something like this.

DMO employee:  You've overcharged me 20 cents.  The fare says $22.70 and you've charged me $22.90.  What, so you overcharged everyone 20 cents to make an extra buck mate, do you?
Me:  Sorry mate, it was an accident.  I accidently pressed the wrong button.
DMO employee: Well I want my 20 cents back.
Me:  I can give you it in cash but I can't put it back on your card.  I'm sure it's not going to blow the Defence Budget of whatever billions a year.
DMO employee:  Well I want a cheque from you, payable to the Defence Material Organisation for 20 cents.  Please have a letter accompanying the cheque explaining why they have received the cheque.
Me:  Sure mate.

I'm not going to write the cheque.  These overpaid public servants can bugger off.