One upside to this job is that we are essentially customers "people" so in addition to the taxi drivers themselves as dispatchers we are often speaking to the secretaries, hotel front desk people, restaurant hostesses, bartenders, travel agents, store managers etc. that are also in contact with customers and thus also know how crazy they are.
Tonight I got a call from a Joe's Crab Shack in one of the suburbs to take some ladies back to their hotel nearby. I did have a cab going that way but he had just picked up at the airport and needed to drive out there still and the drive would be about 30 minutes from the airport plus another 15 minutes from the drop off point to Joe's Crab Shack. I told them about 45 minutes and asked if they wanted to wait and they said okay.
During that 45 minutes I got repeated calls from the people at Joe's Crab Shack and a guy at their hotel checking on the cab since the ladies kept getting more and more pissed off and yelling at them despite being told from the get go how long it would take. (Mind you this was at 11:15 on a Saturday night so they were lucky to get a cab out there period.)
When my cab finally got to Joe's Crab Shack no one was there. I called the hotel they were staying at and talked to the guy I had talked to before who had been telling me how crazy pissed the ladies were already and how they were going to chew them out. He said that they had been yelling at the manager of Joe's Crab Shack so he probably just brought them back and they were probably going to walk in there in a minute with a gun.
The hotel guy told me one of the ladies said to him that they could sue all the restaurants and bars and hotels out there for not providing cab service (as if they somehow have control over cabs) and that this would never happen in New York City. I started laughing hard and said- Not only do they want to try and compare St. Louis with New York City but they're not even in St. Louis. It's not like they're downtown. They're in an outer suburb!
Drastic example image. (Point A is downtown. Point B is the Joe's Crab Shack.)
The hotel guy said- I know right! Look around you, you can see forests what about that makes you think there would be cab service comparable to New York City!??!!?
He said he was glad I could laugh about this because I'm working the Saturday night shift and so it must be horrible for me.
Fucking lovely. Made my night.
1 comment:
Wow! This is one experience you’ll never forget. You’re trying your best to give good service, but certain things didn’t work out well in the end. Well, I just hope you never encounter any of this in the future. It’s quite impossible but just hope for the best. :)
{Earnestine Novick}
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