Driver's Mentality

Someone tole me a story once and it seems relevant to cab driving. No one involved drives a taxi, and this story didn't happen behind the wheel.

Two friends had a mini BBQ going in the bed of their pick-up at a college tailgating party. They overloaded the coals with lighter fluid and before long it was a blazing inferno. The flames were too high to get a grip on the handles without melting your face off. The grill was pushed back far enough on the truck that you couldn't reach it with any hope of picking it up from your feet without tipping it over. Lifting it from inside the bed put you in an awkward squatting position, directly over the fire.

Out of nowhere this third guy walks past my friends to the truck. He bent forward and grabbed the foot of the grill and slid it carefully about eight inches toward him. He then picked it up by the handles, lit his cigarette in the flames and set the grill on the pavement. "You boys wanna go to the titty bar?" he asked taking a drag.

He could have been a cab driver. Not because of the titty bar thing, or not just because of that. There's something about that mentality: you see a problem or obstruction and you act quickly with what you feel is the best course of action. No questioning yourself, or distracting fears. Confidence is key, or you'll get burned.

I've heard a lot of negative bullshit about drivers, but the most common criticism I hear acts as a fair summary for all of it...as it was once uttered by a pizza cook in a downtown bar: "Cab drivers are driving cabs because they can't do anything else." We are regarded as the bottom of the barrel. As Morgan Freeman once said "garbage men of the human condition." I don't know if it applies to us, but I like the way it sounds.

There are drivers who have earned the seedy reputation, but they are a minority. Most of the drivers I know, the good ones, could be doing a lot of other things but they choose to keep driving for one reason or another.

Ironically, I find the opposite to be closer to the truth. The guys who stick around do so because they're one of the few people who can handle it. Most new night drivers don't last two months. It's not that it's a hard job exactly, but not everyone can do it, and most wouldn't want to.