Taxi drivers need to clean up their act
I have never taken an Uber cab, but I’m seriously considering it. Why? Because for an industry allegedly under siege by Uber, GTA taxi drivers and the companies they represent sure have a funny way of fighting this particular war.
A couple of weeks ago, I called a taxi in the city where I live (a suburb of Toronto) to take me to the hospital. The car — a minivan, to be exact — arrived at the appointed hour, and I got in and sat down on the middle row of seats. I started regretting this, even before we pulled out of my driveway.
There was an odour in the car. It wasn’t unpleasant, exactly, but the car didn’t smell “clean,” if you get my drift. I looked between the two captain’s chairs in the front — I tend to “drive” along with whoever’s behind the wheel — and right away, I saw three things: a banana on the floor, a large container of water beside the fruit, and a close-to-filthy inside of the windshield that I’m sure if you tried to see through it when the sun’s at a certain angle, you couldn’t.
The driver was OK. He was unkempt, but he’d been in the shower. And like so many of the cabbies in the GTA these days, he wasn’t talking on his cellphone as we drove, so I gave thanks for small mercies.
But all the way to the hospital, I was thinking that the inside of this cab really was a disgrace. I have nothing against taking a lunch to work, but please, put it in a bag in the trunk, or in this case, the back of the van. Get a bottle of Windex and some paper towels and clean the windshield, inside and out. A small, hand-held vacuum might set you back 50 bucks, but you could touch up the seats and the floor to make the cab presentable before you head out. And how about a squirt of air freshener? Surely, if you’re a taxi driver, you’d want to make your workplace as hospitable as possible to satisfy your customers, wouldn’t you? Apparently not. Last summer, I hailed a cab near Exhibition Place. I’d been at a media conference at Liberty Grand and had to get back to the office and didn’t want to wait for a streetcar. I got in the taxi and — whoa! —I swear the driver must have lived in that car. I won’t go into the details of this particular can’t-wait-for-this-ride-to-be-over adventure, but trust me, it was one you remember for all the wrong reasons.
Now, I consider myself a fairly neat and well-groomed guy. Yes, if I’ve been out and about and I don’t get home till four in the morning, my clothes might not get properly hung up till I awaken later. But otherwise, everything in our bedroom and in my home office is pretty much in its place, and I’m usually pretty nicely turned-out.
Same with my work station at the office. Although I’m not as meticulous as one of the women I’ve worked with over the years, I’m on a par with just about everybody else around me. In short, I have an eye out for tidiness. I think when you and your surroundings are clean and orderly, it’s an indication that you care about what you do. You have some pride.
My personal vehicle is always kept in top-notch condition, inside and out, unlike the taxis I’ve been in lately. I mean, a year or so ago, a guy picked me up and he was wearing a white T-shirt with the sleeves torn off. Good grief.
While writing this, I’m reminded of a business trip I took to Calgary in 1986. I got off the plane from Winnipeg (I’d gone from Montreal to Winnipeg, to Calgary, to Vancouver on assignment for the newspaper I was on) and went to the cab stand. I was picked up by a guy driving a white Cadillac, and he was dressed in a tuxedo.
Are you kidding me? A Cadillac and a tuxedo?
On the way into the city, I quizzed the guy. It turns out there was a real taxi war going on in Calgary at the time (sound familiar?), and if you wanted to stay competitive, you had to have the car — the taxis were mostly Cadillacs — and the uniform, which at the time was a tux. People in the city would call for a cab, and if anything other than a Caddy pulled up to the door, the customer would send it away.
The driver — and he was a young guy — said the whole thing was so cutthroat that if you wanted to stay in business, you had to be at least equal to the competition, and if possible, ahead of it. “I’m thinking of going with a Lincoln and a Morning Coat next,” I remember him saying. “Some of the other guys are considering Crown Vics with white tie and tails.”
Yes, that was extreme but symbolized the lengths some people went to in order to be No. 1. Things in Calgary and elsewhere backtracked, it would seem, as limousines pushed regular taxicabs to the sidelines when it came to most of the business around airports.
But the point — and the lesson — remains: if they want to be in the personal transportation business, and to be successful at it, the taxi drivers around here are going to have to clean up their acts. And the cab companies are going to have to insist on it.
Uber has a system whereby passengers “rate” drivers and the cars they’re driving. Uber might have its problems, like any business, but I bet you that none of their cars have windshields so dirty you can barely see through them.
And I know that none would have a banana on the floor. nmcdonald@thestar.ca