And Always Tip Your Cabbie

The New Yorker’s Ben McGrath attends an off-duty book party in honor of a publication about neoliberalism in the taxicab industry (don’t ask — that’s not what’s interesting here) and discovers what cabbies hate most about their clientele:

Exactly what the full range of party chatter was is tough to say, because a variety of languages were spoken, but an interloper, with a little persistence, was able to discern that most drivers would probably disagree with the cheery characterization of the yellow cab (made at a recent design forum at Parsons) as “New York’s movable public space.” A fairer, if blunter, slogan might be: “Our workspace, where you annoy and disrespect us.”

“They treat the car like they’re slobs,” a driver whose handle on the Bengal Cabbie Association’s CB radio channel is Babar said of his passengers. He added that those who sit in the front seat, and who make radio requests, are usually drunk. Drunk passengers occasionally throw up, and the smell lingers for weeks.

Said interloper (McGrath) learns more; for example, who knew that multiple stops were a problem? Not I:

“There are so many things,” Rizwan Raja, a Pakistani driver, said, rattling off a list of his pet peeves: putting one’s feet up on the partition, smoking, crossing the street lackadaisically. Requesting multiple stops is also frowned upon. “These people come out of expensive, posh bars, where one beer is twenty dollars, but they make groups together so they can share a taxi and save a couple of dollars,” Raja said. “‘Three stops’—that really, really blows me off.” Tips, ever since the fare increase, have been meagre: “Sometimes forty cents, sometimes twenty cents.”

Raja went on, “The worst is when they ask, ‘Where are you from?’ Once you answer that question, then it’s ‘What is the relationship between Al Qaeda and the Pakistani government?'” Raja, who says he is asked that question “almost every day,” has recommended that his passengers see “Fahrenheit 9/11.”