I was supposed to pick up three girls at a bar on State Street around 1 am,  an hour before bar time. As I pull up there’s a girl flailing at me because I’m a taxi. If she’s supposed to be my passenger (the one who called), this means she is so impatient that she’ll take any cab driving down the road.  The call on my hook is 5 minutes old.

She gets in with three girls, not two, and then runs back to the bar to get another. This adds up to 5 passengers and I’m driving a Crown Vic which only has seatbelts for 4.  The law in Madison says we need to provide a seatbelt for each passenger, even if 99% of them don’t use them. It also makes my life TEN THOUSAND times easier because cramming people in a cab is stressful, and having a line to draw is nice.  Also, had they told the phone answerer they were a party of 5, we would have sent them a minivan to accommodate them.

There’s always people trying to cross the line. I stand firm because it isn’t worth losing my license or causing my beloved-company trouble for these snobby, spoiled bitches that’d only tip a dollar anyway. “BUT WE’LL TIP BIG” is a common pleading argument to let more people in (among other thing like: bringing in open containers, turning the meter off early, etc.), but it’s always a big fat lie.

The girls were nice… it was just one that was pissing me off.  It wasn’t even the one that called us or the one that was flailing her arms. As soon as I said “I will not take 5 passengers,” she made a “shhhh” noise and gestured to her friends AS I WAS LOOKING AT HER to bring the fourth girl into the back seat (one was sitting in the front).

“Errr, No. I will not be going anywhere with 5 passengers in my car,” I say, looking straight at her.
“But we can’t leave her BEHIND!” She says.
“Call a second cab, then.”
“But But.. she could get RAPED!”
“Are you kidding me? She’s not going to get raped inside that bar.” It was a well-lit, high profile bar on a Wednesday night. I knew some of the staff, and it was across the street from the VERY well lit Overture Center. Girl was not even drunk. Her phone wasn’t broken, she could fucking call another cab. We were at about a 5 minute wait time.
Instead, she replies with: “Obviously you’ve never been raped before.”
“Get out, all of you. I will not be guilted into giving 5 people a ride, you will walk.”
“But.. I don’t have a coat!” The girl says, her friends are already exiting and rolling their eyes. She honestly tried to use that to get me to keep her in the cab and give her a ride, her eyes were slightly pleading.
“I’m sorry!” I said with mock sympathy and waved goodbye. I even fake-frowned a little.
“WELL! I’m sorry you’re a CAB driver!” She says as her friends close the door on her so she’s stuck inside the cab RIGHT when she was trying to exit. haha! She repeats herself when she clumsily tries to re-open the door. “I’m sorry you have to drive a CAB for a living!” Or something like that.

I couldn’t find a reply to that, I had been knocked a little off-base because *I* wasn’t sorry I was a cab driver.  I just smiled and drove away.  Silly girl.

It bothers me that there’s a lot of young ladies that don’t see reason and don’t see the obvious and low-effort solutions.  What they see is a problem they can get out of by pleading, cajoling, and manipulating someone into fixing for them.  Isn’t it just easier to wait 3-5 minutes for another cab, or tell the person taking the phone order to send a minivan instead of a sedan?  Maybe it’s the feeling of power they get when rules are bent for them that reinforce this behavior.