Hack: How I Stopped Worrying About What to Do with My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab

Book by Plaut Melissa

CHAPTER 1

I was an hour into my shift when I picked them up. Two guys in their early twenties got in at Canal and Broadway wanting to go to the tow pound in Brooklyn Heights to pick up their car. It was 5:00 P.M. and I knew traffic would be bad, but I didn’t really have a choice. When they flagged me down, one of them held the back door open as he waited for the other to get a slice of pizza in the store. I started the meter but was already annoyed. It’s a shitty way to begin any ride when they hold you hostage like that.

It was only when they got settled in the backseat that I realized they had been drinking. They were loopy and happy, but maybe a little too relaxed.

“Holy shit, look! It’s a chick!”

“What?” the other one answered.

“Look! Our cab driver’s a woman!”

“Oh, weird.” They both gaped at me for a second, absorbing. Then, “Hey, can we smoke pot in here?”

I said no.

“Can we smoke a cigarette in here?”

Again, no.

I’ve never really understood why people want to smoke cigarettes so badly when they’re in a cab. It’s not like they’re gonna be in there for hours or anything. Most likely they’ll be in the cab for about ten minutes, maybe a half hour if there’s traffic. And at the end of the ride they’ll be able to smoke.

In the cab, however, it’s illegal. Not like I’m some stickler for the law or anything, but I’m not gonna risk a $200 ticket, plus points on my license, for some shithead who can’t stall his impulses until he gets out of my cab. The only reason to let people smoke is because you hope they’ll show their appreciation by giving a bigger tip. But the few times I’ve allowed it, it just wasn’t worth it. So what? They gave me an extra two dollars? Big deal. It totally didn’t make up for the stress I experienced the entire time they were smoking. Plus, the smell lingers in the back, and when you get upper-crust antismoking Park Avenue types back there after that, you’re screwed. They get upset and pretend to cough, and leave an even shittier tip than the shitty tip they’d already planned on leaving. It’s just not worth it.

Of course, I smoke in the cab. But only under special circumstances. Like when I’m alone on my way back from far out in the boroughs or something, and I know the NYPD and the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) cops won’t see me, nor will they give a shit if they do. They really only care about stuff like that in Manhattan. And my reasoning is, since I’m stuck in the cab for twelve hours a night, I’m entitled to a smoke every now and then.

Anyway, we were sitting in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, and I heard that signature sound of beer cans cracking open. I called back to them, “Are you guys drinking beer back there?”

A guilty “No” reached my ears.

“No, seriously, are you? I heard the cans open and if you spill anything, you’ll be putting me out of business for the night. And if the cops see us, I’ll get a huge ticket. Please, just don’t spill it, okay?” At that point, it was the most I could ask for since I couldn’t really kick them out on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Actually, I probably could’ve if I really wanted to. Paul the crazy Romanian dispatcher once told me a story about kicking a passenger out on the side of the Long Island Expressway. They were on their way to JFK airport and the passenger got mad because there was traffic, so he did what many other irrational assholic passengers have done–he blamed it on the driver. He started saying, “I’m not gonna pay for this. You’re running up the meter. This is preposterous.” But all Paul was doing was sitting in traffic, trying to get to JFK as fast as possible.

Some people seem to think that going slow and sitting in traffic is good for a cabbie since the meter is running. This couldn’t have been more wrong back when Paul had his run-in, or during my first two years behind the wheel. The meter ran when the taxi was idling, yes, but it clicked off at a much slower pace than it would have if the cab had been moving. Traffic had an inverse relationship to our income, and we would essentially be losing money for the amount of time we were stuck sitting still. It was called “waiting time,” but it should have been called “wasting time,” since back then the rate for it hadn’t been raised since 1990.

In December 2006, the TLC finally agreed to an increase, doubling the waiting rate in order to almost catch up with the normal wage. But before this change took place, the meter used to tick off forty cents for every two minutes sitting still or in slow-moving traffic, which translated into $12 an hour. This was nothing compared to the forty cents we would get for every fifth of a mile driven while the cab was moving, which, if you were lucky–and fast–could bring in between $30 and $40 an hour.

The worst thing about the pre—December 2006 waiting rate was that it didn’t even come close to what we needed to cover our regular shift expenses. Each twelve-hour shift, cabbies pay what’s called a “lease fee” to take the cab, which is between $111 and $132, depending on which night you’re working. This is the money we have to make back, plus our gas expenses, in order to break even, and that takes up the first four or five hours of the shift–sometimes more, sometimes less. After that, everything we earn is ours to keep, but the stress of starting out at around $160 in the hole sucks. Before the TLC increased the waiting rate, if I sat still with the meter on for the full twelve hours of my shift, I would’ve ended up owing money to the garage at the end of the night.

So Paul kicked the guy out of the cab, luggage and all, right there on the shoulder of the highway in the middle of nowhere Queens.

But I wasn’t gonna do that, as much as I wanted to. These guys were assholes, but they were nice assholes. I mean, they weren’t trying to be assholes. They started getting rowdy in the backseat, punching each other and play fighting, calling each other dickhead and cocksucker and bitch. Which was all fine, except the cab was shaking from the motion and I was afraid their beers were gonna spill, so I started throwing out empty threats. “If you guys don’t chill the fuck out, I will kick you out right here. Calm down, okay?” If they forced me to, I would do it, but I really didn’t want to.

When they heard this, they started back in on the woman thing. “Hey,” one said, “I totally respect women. I think it’s cool that you’re a cab driver.” The other, perhaps the brighter of the two, said, “If you respect women so much, why do you feel the need to say that every time you talk to a woman? Don’t you see the problem with that?” Then to me he said, “Don’t mind him. He’s drunk, but he means well.”

It’s true I am sort of an anomaly. Out of the forty thousand licensed cab drivers in New York City, about two hundred are women, making up less than 1 percent of the cabbie population. It’s no wonder people make such a big deal when they see me.

When we finally got off the Brooklyn Bridge, I had to look at the directions they’d given me to find the tow pound. At one point, I ended up in the wrong lane, a left-turn-only lane that led onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. I didn’t want that. We were at a red light and a minivan was on my right, so I put my right blinker on and tried to get the driver’s attention so that maybe he would let me over. Turns out he wanted to make the left from his lane, the straight-only lane, and didn’t see my signal, because when I pulled out in front of him, he stopped short and honked his horn at me. The guys in the back were like, “Oh shit, that guy almost hit you!” I said, “Yeah, I guess we were both sort of wrong there.”

As I continued driving toward the waterfront, looking at the directions, I realized the minivan had abandoned his intended left turn and had started following me. Not only that, he was weaving in and out of the oncoming traffic lane, trying to get next to me. He kept racing up, getting next to me, and then hanging back when a car would come against him. But he kept doing it, and when he’d get beside me, he’d then swerve toward me from my left side, as if he was trying to run me off the road. I’m guessing he was mad.

My whole body went on red alert and I gripped the wheel hard with both hands, trying to keep the cab under control.
This guy was making me a little more than nervous. He wasn’t backing down, wouldn’t just let it go, and I wasn’t sure what to do, didn’t know what he was capable of. The guys in the backseat starting freaking out and yelling at him, but I had already learned that this kind of thing only encourages psycho drivers.

I heard their window open and I turned and said sharply, “DO NOT talk to him. Do not taunt him or encourage him. Do not engage with him at all or it will get worse for all of us. Okay? Please just put your window back up. Don’t even look at him, okay?” They listened obediently and I heard the window go back up. If there was one thing I’d already learned in my short time as a cab driver, it was DO NOT ENGAGE. There will be thousands upon thousands of angry drivers on the streets, and whether they’re righteous or not doesn’t really matter, but the situation always gets worse if you enter into the verbal @...