 Receivership of Insult, as well as Injury -Alex Farr The conversion of the Oakland cab companies to a computer dispatch system (as opposed to the pencil and paper system we had been using) was a strange and disorienting thing. All us drivers had gotten used to the old system, we'd each developed our little tricks and scams to work the system... and now we're all having to come up with new ones. It's like starting all over again. Sort of. And that's how I found myself making some of the same mistakes I was making in my first year in the business. The thing is, the conversion was done to merge the dispatch of all three of the companies that my sleaze-merchant boss owns. So she could fire half her dispatchers. What that really means is that now I've got access to a shitload of business that didn't normally call for Yellow/Metro Yellow cabs... and so now I've gotta learn which dispatch orders to ignore all over again. It was a giddy feeling at first though. All those Friendly account orders... running $20-$50 dollars a pop. I had a really good first week too, which has made me all the more a sucker, all over again. And that's how I was gotten. I'd just dropped someone off on Pill Hill, when a dispatch call came over the computer for West Oakland. Yeah, sure... it's pretty much a big ghetto, but at least 60% of the orders that come from there are people who're genuinely gonna stick around for their cab, and actually pay too. And I was already on the move. And, I was feeling lucky. So I accepted the call. It was for 2218 Filbert, or something like that. I stared at it for a few moments, there on the computer screen, trying to psychically determine whether to bother or not. I mean, I may've been giddy with all the business, but I did have several years of this shit under my belt... In the end, I decided that it seemed like a familiar address, and not familiar in a bad way, so I went for it. As I pulled up I pressed the proper buttons to have the computer call and inform them, in that cute computer voice, that their cab had arrived. Then I sat, and waited, and watched. It took a minute, but I remembered the house. It was actually one of our old Metro Yellow regulars... an old guy who went back to- Pill Hill. He had city subsidization vouchers to pay for his trips, which meant he wouldn't tip, but he'd at least pay. So I tried to relax. After about five minutes of waiting, I wasn't very relaxed anymore. I wandered up to the door, which I wouldn't've even bothered doing if I hadn't remembered that this guy was a regular, and I asked, as pleasantly as I could "So, what the hell's going on? You want a cab or what here?" "Uhh yeah... ohh, I don't know what you want me to do?" answered an unfamiliar voice. "Come on, you gotta help me." replied a more familiar voice. "'ell you wan me'do?" came the first voice again. The door was open, so I ventured a peek. There was a little old lady, sort of wringing her hands and shrugging, and cursing under her breath, an even littler old man fumbled to get from a dining table chair to a wheelchair. "Fuck me..." I muttered to myself. Then, aloud, I added "Look, I don't know what's going on, but if you want me to stick around I'm gonna have to run the meter." They muttered some more, incoherent really, but the tone seemed to suggest it was gonna be fine, so I went back out to start the meter. By the time I'd turned back around, the two have them had somehow managed to fumble the old man into the wheelchair, and had gotten him to the door. Unfortunately, there were two steps down from the door to the driveway. They were flummoxed. I was standing there, watching and debating whether I should just leave his dumb ass or not, when the old lady appeared with a piece of wood which she clumsily flopped down to use as some sort of ramp. Then, as I watched... thinking of old slapstick silent movies... she started trying to wheel him up onto the lip of wood that protruded above the step. I just watched, fascinated, as she proceeded to push that chair, which, instead of clearing the top edge of the wooden slat, just pushed it before it... and once the chair had pushed it sufficiently forward, it just dropped to the next step, leaving the little old man and his chair to tumble and pitch, and roll. I'd never seen such a spectacular wheelchair crash before. "Goddamn it woman, you go and do that fer?" mumbled the old man, who'd apparently forgotten to put his teeth in and couldn't quite pronounce anything right. "'ell you... know I can'... an I..." mumbled the old lady, obviously too stressed out about the project at hand to even approach coherence. I should've just left them to figure it out for themselves. I nearly did. I wish I would have. But I'd invested nearly 10 minutes already... so I wanted to at least get paid. So I did what I was obviously gonna have to do. I walked over, and physically picked the fucker up, and put him back in his chair. He must've weighed all of 80 pounds, at about 6 feet tall, if one of his feet hadn't been amputated and he could still stand. It was the same guy though, the one I'd picked up before... only since I'd last seen him he'd lost some weight, especially off his right ankle. So anyway, I wheeled him over to the car, and I opened the door for him, the front door even, and after a few minutes he managed to hobble in on his remaining foot, and while I folded his chair and tossed it in the trunk, he managed to shimmy the rest of his skinny ass into the car... and off we went. It was about a 4 minute drive to where he was going... but then he remembered that he'd given me the wrong address, so I had to double back... only to eventually bring him back to where he usually went, but was too incoherent to recall for himself. The son of a bitch. But the meter was running... so what the hell did I care? Then began the struggle to drag his skinny ass back out of the car. I opened the door for him, so he could do some preliminary shimmying while I went back for the chair. I was moving like lightning, my desire to evict him from my life lending a little extra spring to my step. He'd gotten his foot out, his stump dangling next to it, by the time I got the chair out for him. "Ok, can you make it?" I asked him, hoping against hope that he'd developed some sort of independence skills before being turned out of whatever medical establishment that had lopped off his foot. It was a foolish dream. I had to pretty much bodily lift him up and plop his ass into his chair for him. He mumbled something or other, but he was apparently as incapable of dealing with the loss of his teeth as he was with the loss of his foot, so I couldn't make heads or tails of his mumblings. I just nodded, and answered "Yeah, that'll be $8.48." He nodded some more, and began looking through his pockets. I tapped my foot, and watched out for sheriffs. I was parked half way into a driveway, in the middle of a T-intersection, just short of a bus stop. It was still technically red, but it was far enough back that I hoped I could argue my way out of the $250 bus ticket... but what I really wanted was to get the fuck out of there. "Uhh, I t'ink I fuhgo mah money..." he mumbled, once he'd gone through every pocket in reach. "You... forgot your fucking money? You gotta be kidding me!" I answered, rather politely considering that I really just wanted to strangle the fucker and put him out of his misery already. "Hol' on, you'uh ge' paid... hol' on..." he mumbled, and searched some more. This time through, he found two dollar bills. "Uhh, I jus' goh two dolluh... Bu' don' wohhy, you ge' yuh money, I'hh ge' i' 'o you 'he nex' 'ime..." he assured me. "Yeah, right, great..." I answered, adding "oh yeah, and here's the rest of your shit..." as I piled the leg supports for the chair, his coat, and his backpack in his lap. Just then some nice lady, who apparently knew the old guy, and who equally obviously was paid by the hour by a company that didn't occasionally tell her "Ohh sorry, we forgot to set aside the money to pay you... maybe next time." showed up. "Ohh, Mr. (whatever the hell it was)... how you doin' today?" "Ohh, I'hh ok..." he started to answer. "Yo, big guy... you need to move back a foot or so, so I can close my door and get the hell out of here..." I mentioned. "What the hell's you're problem?" the nice lady asked me, looking horrified as I dragged the old guy's wheelchair the hell out of the way so I could close my door. "Lord, you don't have to be so rude!" "Yeah lady, you gonna pay me the other $7 this guy owes me?, then I'll be polite..." "I'm sorry, I don't have any money on me..." "Yeah, no one ever does. Buh bye now, gotta go." I cut her off, and closed my door, bumping it past the old guy's stump as gently as was convenient. "You know, you shouldn't be driving no cab. If you can't be polite to the public, then you shouldn't be doin' no work with the public! You know what, I'm gonna call and report you! You heah me!" "Yeah, that's great lady, you knock yourself out. Then I'll explain how he didn't pay for his fare and see about having him prosecuted. In the mean time, watch your toes..." I answered her, and pulled back out of the driveway and into traffic. I didn't pay any attention to whatever bits of wisdom she answered with, because there was another order up on the computer, for Pill Hill again. What the hell though? I may not've been able to pry my pay out of an old man with a stump, but I really hadn't wasted much more gas or time than I would have if I'd gone back to a cabstand to wait... and with the nearby order, my losses were cut. But still... to get stiffed by an old stump-footed stick figure, after wasting over 20 minutes loading and driving and unloading his dumb ass... I felt like a rookie all over again. And then there was that fucking busybody! Expecting that I should take 10 minutes more, unpaid, to explain to her how I'd just done 20 minutes of work for $2... and all the while risking getting a $250 ticket?? I should've
run over her toes...
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