GrodsCorp

Pity the taxi driver

Sunday 17 February 2008, 11:09 am

The Editor

Categories: Melbourne, Politics

Tags: JohnBrumby, police, taxis

We love to slag off taxi drivers for being unable to drive, unable to find major landmarks, and unable to speak English. I’ve done it. But honestly try to put yourself into the shoes of a Melbourne taxi driver and understand just how utterly shithouse the job would be. First there’s the pay.

[T]he driver, having split his fares 50/50 with the operator, will earn $8.50 an hour after tax and GST. For the shorter version of a standard 60 to 80-hour week, for full-time cabbies that’s $450. Hardly a rich reward.

That’s when you’re even getting paid the fare.

Three weeks ago, my driver was affable Ranji Mullick, from India’s Punjab, who said, “I’ve had a good run,” before checking himself. “Well, I’ve had two runners, the last one a woman in her 20s, who I drove from Chapel Street (Prahran) to a block of flats in Kensington. She got out, went into the flats to get money to pay me and, of course, I didn’t see her again.”

Plus you have to question whether the paltry coin makes up for the risks.

TAXI driver Praboj Rhani heard the racist insult on a Saturday night, about the same time his shoulders became footrests for one of the three young men in the back seat.

Mr Rhani had collected his passengers in King Street just before midnight, about the time pubs and nightclubs start disgorging the first of their well-tanked clientele. “Drive us to Sunshine West, brown c—,” he was instructed.

As the invective flowed, Mr Rhani, from Rawalpindi in Pakistan’s west, knew he’d be doing no such thing, and pulled over. His firm “Please leave my cab” was met with “Make us, c—”.

So where are the police when passengers get abusive and threaten violence? Oh, that’s right. Victoria’s finest aren’t really the finest.

[Rhani] got out and was met on the pavement by a young policeman, who asked him what the problem was. “My passengers are abusing me, sir, and I don’t want to carry them. This is a dangerous thing, I don’t want to be involved with them.”

Mr Rhani said his entreaties and the policeman’s command to “get back in and drive the cab, you’re a taxi driver, take them to where they want to go” became repetitive. Finally, the policeman became impatient and said: “Get back in the cab and drive the f—ing thing.”

To protect and to serve. Apparently.

Of course, Premier John Brumby has the power to, you know, make laws that increase the safety for taxi drivers and the quality of taxi services but he’s just employing the tactic that is working so well with teachers at the moment: bitch about the quality of those doing the job but do nothing to help those people do it better.

Shortly after becoming Premier, John Brumby said the two worst things about Melbourne were a 42-degree day and the city’s taxis.

Why not do something about it, John?

6 Comments

Magic Bellybutton (Sunday 17 February 2008, 4:54 pm) #

That’s fucking awful. I always try to be nice to taxi drivers. If they do piss me off I just don’t speak to them, I sure as shit don’t treat them like that at any time.
Wah (Sunday 17 February 2008, 10:03 pm) #

The cop’s attitude stinks of some kind of class system shit, where it’s “fuck you, you’re just a taxi driver, you deserve no respect, I’m a policeman I don’t help your kind”.
What would have happened if he got the shot kicked out him after that? How then did the young fuckwits in the back behave after just getting immunity.

He surely had every right to discontinue the trip.

I just got back from Adelaide where, you may be interested you know, I had a young Indian driver who couldn’t really find his way from the Airport to Glenelg (they’re blody close).
But I don;t blame these guys for this. What can they do. As you’vr poined out no one does this for fun. There needs to be better training, not necessarily like the London Knowledge, but just the basics including major transport hubs and attractions, city streets and major arterials.
Dave from Albury (Sunday 17 February 2008, 10:16 pm) #

I think that for every trip that I’ve made to the Grand Prix I have a Melbourne cabbie story. Most of these stories tend to centre around near death experiences, scandalous lack of direction, cabbies who don’t match the photo on the license or a combination of all three.

That said, there’s no question that it’s probably one of the shittiest gigs on offer from a risk/reward perspective.
Dave from Albury (Sunday 17 February 2008, 10:18 pm) #

Oh, and GPS units are cheap as shit these days, there’s no reason that there’s not one in every cab. That would alleviate an enormous amount of frustration for patrons.
Andy B (Monday 18 February 2008, 1:20 am) #

Oh, fuck these cunts. When they learn to have respect for other road users, then they’ll get respect themselves. Respect is earned, not granted automatically.

I’m talking shit like pulling out without looking, stopping wherever they damn well please, pulling u-bolts nearly causing collisions, etc, etc.

I hate these arseholes and have no sympathy for what they were bleating about in the article. Fuck them.
krypto (Monday 18 February 2008, 1:45 am) #

didn’t Kennett vow and declare he was going to introduce minimum standards for cabbies?
Late 90’s I seem to remember, he reckoned he was going to make sure they all
1. spoke english
2. knew where they were going
3. maintained cabs in a reasonable state of hygeine
Obviously he was a resounding sucess in that endeavour. I think this was the same time cabbies started wearing uniforms.
On a related note, my Grandpa was a reasonably highly regarded engineer for a well known Australian company, one of the perks was he got to go on a LOT of overseas trips and travelled by cab pretty much everywhere he went.
He was a bit of an afficionado of taxi travel and while he regarded the London cabbies highly he reckoned the Tokyo cabbies have got to be seen to be believed.
They wore white gloves and he reckons he never saw a cleaner vehicle in his whole life.
The New York cabbies he reckoned carry guns, all have the most vile BO, their cabs are full of garbage and the traffic is so bad they carry a bottle in the cab to take a piss in when the traffic is in gridlock.
The gondoliers in Venice serenade their passangers (incidentally, some parts of Venice are so rough it is unsafe to go there after dark even in a gondola, they pull a number of murder victims out of the canals every year).
He was in Singapore when the main urban method of transport was the rickshaw and he reckoned he had no idea how those guys did it the smog alone was enough to make him sick even without exertion and he was a chain smoker so it must have been terrible I figure.

When I was in the NT, I noticed the cabs all have vinyl coverings so they can be hosed out in case someone is bleeding, vomits or is incontinent (so the cabbie explained)
Maybe I’m getting old but I can remember when you’d get in a cab and it would stink like an ashtray because smoking was still permitted in them.
Vile.