drunksadgirl attack!

Posted on June 18, 2006 by yellowandblackmail

Last night I got a call out of the Blue Velvet (a martini bar that the college crowd thinks is upper class but its really just a theme bar) down town going WAAAAYYY out to the west side of town. I pull up, a guy comes over to my window and knocks, and a girl gets in the back seat. This is confusing to me, since the name on my computer says “Dave”.

Dave tells me that he needs me to get this girl home. He hands me $22, gives me his cell phone number in case I need a credit card to pay the rest, and apologizes over and over. The girl in the back seat is weeping the whole time, pulling on his shirt, and begging him not to do this.

DRUNK SAD GIRL ATTACK GOGOGO!

So the whole way to her house she’s sobbing, barely able to talk, drunk, throwing herself around in the back of my cab, and snuffling a lot (this part is kinda gross because I can tell she needs a tissue, but I have none to give her). I get out of her that the man- Dave- was her ex-boyfriend who broke up with her two months ago. She cannot talk without sobbing the words out, so its kind of hard to interpret things. I coo at her, tell her things will be better tomorrow after some sleep, but she insists that she needs to show Dave how much he hurt her. Because he doesn’t know… “HOW COULD HE JUST THROW ME IN A CAB AND GET RID OF ME?!” I figured he just wanted to get insane drunk girl home safely.

She tries to convince me to drop her off at his house so she can wait for him to show him how much he hurt her. I tell her, “No, I was hired to take you to your home, the trip is already paid for.” She offers to pay me more… and I’m tempted, but this girl seriously needed to get her ass home and in bed.

I make more cooing noises, tell her things will be alright, she tells me I’m such a sweet girl, etc. She apologizes STILL sobbing, I can’t make out words well, and she has snot running down her face. Yuck.

But all the way to her house, WAAAAAAYYYYY out on the west side, I’m thinking that everyone’s been in her shoes. I felt incredibly old and sad, because I’d been in her situation and burdened myself on other people, and been in the situation of the guy. Its hard when you know you’re hurting someone so bad and you just want to take care of them. But you have to be strong because the breakup needs to happen for some reason or another, and you have to be the one with the spine. You have to be the one that gets the finger pointed at, you have to be the one to be the target of scathing comments, rumors, snickers, harsh words, and bleeding hearts. And you have to shoulder it gracefully, because you KNOW how much you hurt this other person, and you used to care for them so much, and probably still do… and you feel incredibly guilty about it.

I dropped the girl off at her place, made sure I didn’t voice that her ex probably knows how much he hurt her, because that’d only flare things up… and after she got inside I called the number the guy in the beginning gave me.

I let him know that the money he gave me was barely enough, but the girl gave me a $2 tip. I let him know she was at her house and not at his, like she wanted me to take her to. I did my best to kinda put him at ease, because I knew he was just trying to take care of her and the situation as gracefully as possible.  He was also very polite to me in the beginning, and a kindness deserves kindness in return.

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Honor among thieves

Posted on June 7, 2006 by yellowandblackmail

And I thought Saturday was exciting. Monday tops it all, I think.

I am sitting in a post, where taxis sit when there’s no business. Someone calls us and wants a cab to pick them up from a house (we have the address and phone number), make a stop at the bank, and then they want to go to Denny’s, about 3-5 blocks from the bank. Totally normal ride.

The call comes out of my post, I get over to the house pretty quickly. Two ladies get in my back seat and two men are talking on the front lawn of the house. The girls make it clear that one of the guys is coming, but the other they don’t want in. I’m thinking maybe it was one of their boyfriends and they’re splitting up or something… So the guy they want gets in the front seat, and the lady in back already called him by his name (which does not match the name on the computer, and for the life of me I cannot remember the name she called him). I lock the doors as the other guy on the lawn reaches for the handle. We drive away, and the ladies and gentleman thank me very much for having a quick lock-the-doors reflex. I joke about how its my habit from bar time.

As the ride goes on, its sorta clear to me these three have been on drugs recently, I don’t know if they’re coming down from them or just took them or what, but they’re not acting normal. Fidgety, one’s quiet, one’s chatterboxgirl, but they smell like a dirty ash tray and chemicals. We make our stop at the bank, I park facing away from the bank looking at the main avenue.

After about 5 minutes the guy comes back (the girls had stayed in the car), and the man says we’re going to Rocky Rococo’s. In the beginning of the ride it was debated on which we would go to, Denny’s or Rocky’s… they’re within about 20 steps of each other so it makes no difference to me. As we come up to Rocky’s the guy’s shuffling a lot of bills down where I cannot see him, and it looks like he’s getting them in or out of his shoe. I find this kinda weird. But we get to Rocky’s, and the man says that he knows what its like to have’ta work for tips, so he gives me some money and says keep it, then they get out. I tell the ladies to enjoy the air conditioning in Rocky’s (they complained earlier that there was none in their apt), and they leave my car and close the doors… and don’t even go in to Rocky’s.

The bills they handed me were 5 $5 bills, with a paper clip on them. Sweet, $9 tip. That guy was pretty nice.

2-3 minutes later my dispatcher is asking frantically if anyone picked any flags up (a flag is someone who hails a cab without calling and ordering one) near East Towne Mall (where I had dropped). I tell him I did a couple hours ago… then he realizes where I had made a stop with this recent call.  Associated bank.  This was the specific bank that these people wanted to stop at before even getting in my cab. So the dispatch knew exactly where I was the whole time. “Call me right now on your cell phone,” he says over the air.

Apparently the man in my cab robbed the bank at gunpoint while we were stopped and used me as the get-away driver. >.>

Holy cow!!

I’m grateful I was nice and joked around with these people enough for them to like me! Otherwise I’d probably have gotten robbed too! Or at least they would have run on the fare or something.

But… I go back and talk with investigators for a while… and they take the money that the robber gave me as evidence… they just take it. All $25 and the paper clip.

grwwaawwrrwaarrrr

Who’s the robber now?!  Ah well… I may or may not be called as a witness if these people ever get caught. Apparently they robbed another bank and a gas station somewhere, too. All at gunpoint. This guy had a freaking GUN in my front seat that I didn’t even know about!

Well… its a fun story to tell, at least. And no, I don’t exaggerate any of my cab stories… truth is much stranger than fiction. I can’t believe some of these idiots.

Then yesterday I get this rickety old lady in my cab… it takes her 12 minutes to get from her apt into my front seat. The ride is only $6.25 but I’ve spent about half an hour with her…  But anyway! She gets in and she’s going to za bank! I ask her “You’re not going to rob the bank are you?” playfully.

“Why yes I am!” She says enthusiastically. …. ……

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Compilation

Posted on June 4, 2006 by yellowandblackmail

A Saturday in the life of a cab driver of Madison, WI:

Unisex.
I picked up an ANCIENT lady from the ER of one of Madison’s fine hospitals. She has her ride paid for by the hospital, but she insists before she gets out of her wheelchair on giving me 5 individually crinkled up $1 bills. I stuff them in my pocket and get her in the cab… and her chair in the trunk. On our way to her house, she starts saying something about a salon.

“There’s a salon on the way to my house,” she says in a stereotypical old lady voice, “It has something about… sex in the name… what could that MEAN?! Why would anyone want to go there, I just don’t know…” I soothe her and let her know that we’ll figure it out when we pass by.

I see it, and read aloud “Unisex Hair” at the same time that she says “Un-sex Hair”. I chuckle a little and let her know what it means… she still doesn’t get it and thinks it’s something dirty. She thanks me profusely when I wheel her up into her apt complex to her front door. She also warns me about sexual harassment in this neighborhood and I should be careful getting back to my car… that is parked in broad daylight 20 feet from her apt building.

FFXI tip.
There’s a party of 12 coming out of a hotel, they have ordered 3 cabs from us, and they’re going to Visions, the local strip club. Obviously a bachelor party. On the way the guy sitting directly behind me is asking me what I do other than drive cab.  Do I go to school?  The typical questions that EVERYONE asks me. So when he asks the obvious “What do you do in your spare time?” I answer “Play video games.”  This guy goes nuts and says his friend sitting next to him is all about video games. So finally I’m not being hit on anymore, we’re talking about MMORPGs. The guy who plays video games asks what I play and suggests some new games coming out, etc… all the way to the club. The fare is $13.50 as we pull up and I point out that a couple of the strippers are just sorta hanging out (literally) in front of the club having a smoke. The boys don’t even notice, and offer me a $20 with a “keep it” added to their thank you.

Then they go get their friends from the other Union that took them, bring them to my car and start exclaiming “SHE PLAYS FINAL FANTASY ELEVEN!”  They gape at me and smile and don’t pay any attention to the strippers until I pull away. “No wonder gamers rarely touch boobs… they just aren’t interested.” My boyfriend says when I tell him about it on the phone 2 minutes after it happens.

Party Hide.
3 gay men and a woman jump in my cab as I’m trying to navigate a confusing apt complex… They’re the ones I’m looking for, but as we start to pull away, the girl exclaims “OH SHIT I FORGOT MY PURSE OH MY GOD” with a big frowny face. I don’t get why she’s so upset, but as we’re waiting for her to run inside and fetch it, two of the guys in the back are ducking low in the seat. “Um… are you ok?” I ask.

“Oh.. ya we’re fine we’re just hiding.” I get it out of them that its their friend’s birthday party, and they’ve just ditched her. That’s why the girl didn’t want to go in and get her purse… she thought that she had made a clean get-away. But she was caught, as she left the second time… and several phone calls were made to the cellphones in the cab during the ride as we race to the bar, where the four passengers made a not-clean get-away.  The whole way the guy in the front seat is playing it off and saying he’ll take the blame, the two gay men in the back are feeling TERRIBLE, and the girl is dramatically panicked. They were all a bunch of drama queens in my opinion, but made for some entertainment for me!

Tony Toni Tone.
Bachelorette party. Age 45. These are the BEST. The ladies were hammered, middle aged, and went CRAZY when “I wanna sex you up” came on the radio. Never mind that it’s a Color Me Bad song, we were all convinced it was a Tony Toni Tone song. Then one of the ladies insisted they go inside and dance to Madonna.

Fisted. This one is the gem of the night.
3 boys and 1 girl. They were all younger than me and very immature. We’re making two stops before I’m supposed to go out-of-town. I picked them up from a bar, the guy sitting in the middle-back has either hand on each of the front seats, and I HATE when people are moving my chair around while I’m driving so I tell him to knock it off. The guy in the front seat starts making fun of me for being defensive, then he starts leaning on my bag that I have sitting between the front two seats. I ask him to knock it off, and he gets that cocky attitude again.

I brush it off and keep driving, he’s not leaning anymore so its fine, right?  Then the guy on the left starts wrestling with the girl on the right (in the back seat), with a guy between them. “Hey guys no wrestling in the cab,” I say in a sorta-fun voice. “I’m just making out with ‘insert-name-here’!” he says. The guy in the front seat thinks he’s funny and says “And soon I’ll be makin out with you!” to me.

“Then you’ll soon have a fist in your mouth!” I say back in the same cocky voice he’s been using the whole ride.

The guy in the back seat pipes up “Soon you’ll have a fist in your ass!” LOL BOZO! I slam on my brakes and pull over. “Would you like to walk home?” I say in my Mom Voice. Nervous laughs and “I’m sorry”s. I get going again, but then the wise ass in the front seat starts going off on how I’m so defensive.

Something is said about how I shouldn’t drive this shift because I’m not cut out for it, that I should go to school and get an education and a real job, etc… We’re about 4-5 blocks from our very first stop. I slam on the brakes again, ask for the fare on the meter, and tell them to get the fuck out of my cab. I receive my money as they’re exclaiming what a terrible person I am and how uneducated I am, and how much better they are.

As I was driving off, I smiled. There were about 10,000 things I could have said to make myself look smarter, or them stupid, or make myself feel better about the whole thing, but in the end… I got their money, they got to walk, and 3 of them didn’t make it to their own house. I didn’t get the short end of any of that deal. I also let my dispatcher know not to take an order from that location for the rest of the evening.

Fist-Fight/ER/Taco.
There’s some hotshot basketball coach at the UW college. His son got married last night and had a huge party at the Oakcrest Tavern afterward. I pull up and this couple is trying to get in my cab, but I tell them over and over I’m there for Tim. They don’t even acknowledge I’m talking to them until they start to wonder why the door isn’t opening after trying the handle 10 times. Turns out Tim needs to go to the ER.  A woman comes over to me after about 5 minutes, and says “Oh, Tim’s just a little dizzy, please wait for him he needs to go to the hospital, please?” She’s pleading with me. I can see that Tim cannot sit up, he looks unconscious, and I refuse to take him. I tell the two who’ve been trying to get in my cab to get in.

“OH NOW she lets us in!” The man says. Not a good start, but I’m a little distracted by a fist fight that’s poured out of the bar and into the middle of the street. I hear glass breaking, and just laugh as these two grown men in tuxedos act like 12-year-olds.

We get going, and I’m asking about the drama from the wedding reception. Apparently the guy who started the fight was the best man. I start to think that it might be over a girl, but I’m wrong!  Its something even more ridiculous. Apparently someone accidentally knocked a guy’s beer as he was trying to drink from the bottle, then the bottle knocks the holder in the eye and he gets a cut. So the best man steps up and fights someone.  Idiots shouldn’t drink.

So the whole me not letting these people in my cab is completely forgotten, and an argument starts up in the back seat about the man really REALLY wanting taco bell and we should all drive through before going home. Girl says no. Boy says yes. I say “PLEASE I NEED AGREEMENT!”. We drive through taco bell, and the guy starts messing with the poor dude trying to take his order. “What’s your favorite meal?” “Number 7” “um… is it good?”

“I’ll get a number tttwww… SIX! and 3 steak tacos! and a large Mist soda!” This is after I’m like “DUDE THERE IS A LINE BEHIND US.” We get to the window, the total is $13-something and my passenger asks for two more steak tacos, totally ignoring the fact his gf kept asking for a plain meat-and-cheese taco the ENTIRE time.

I get them home, they give me a steak taco and a $6 tip. I shake my head and enjoy my dinner.

Pee.
Ya this is really about pee. I’m back at the bar where I picked up the bachelorettes from earlier. There’s a guy taking a LONG ASS piss on the side of the building. He can’t stop as he sees me pulling up, and he kinda turns himself, embarrassed. I’m thinking to myself “omgomgomg please don’t be my passenger uuugghhhh”

He walks over to my cab and my heart sinks. He tries to open the door but they’re locked, I roll down my window. “I’m sorry you had to see me pee, but I really had to go and they wouldn’t let me into the bar to do it… I’m not your passenger, I just wanted to apologize.”  Well that was nice and unexpected.

My real passenger was a bad tipper and kinda sucked.

Heart Attack.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one getting weirdos. My last ride was the bartender from the Shamrock, a gay bar downtown. He was going home, but he wanted to tell me about how this guy in his bar was having a heart attack or something because he had danced too much that night with a heart condition. He had to take the guy out back and call an ambulance and stay on the phone with 9-11 until it got there.

Ya not an exciting ending for me, but I made the passenger feel like a hero.

The other drivers had a bunch of crazy things happen too. Ross had a lady giving head to her boyfriend in his back seat as their best friend was in his front seat trying to ignore it and have civil conversation. Aaron had something weird happen to him, too, but I forget it now.  I remember at the end of the night there was so much LAUGHTER when the drivers were all checked in and telling their stories.  Its been quiet lately.  Last night was just 2 months worth of “cab stories” rolled into one night.

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