Hooking Up With a Garage

Through the grapevine, I'd been given the name and telephone number of a taxi fleet in Queens looking for drivers to fill its cabs on slower shifts. 

I phoned Wailing Management cab company at 31-08 Northern Boulevard.  They urged me to drop by sometime soon, in an early afternoon, to be interviewed and fill out some forms.

It was already near the end of June and time was rushing by, so I made sure to get there the next day.  They liked the looks of me and me of them, leaving the preliminaries to go smoothly.

I told the dispatcher Milton (or was it Harry -- I mean, who can tell their Harry's from their Milton's without a real bit of practice) I hadn't driven a cab for a long while and that the taxi school didn't get around to teaching us all the details on how to operate the taxi meter.  He called over Paul, who was waiting to be assigned a car for the night, and asked if he'd show me the ropes.

We went out to the lot and used one of the free cabs parked there.  Paul was a veteran driver who did some writing on the side, and he appreciated how important it was for me to be able to handle the meter with some degree of ease.  He did his best to help me get it all down pat, but let's be honest: it was complicated stuff -- involving a lot more options than I faced in the '80s.  Back then, cabs didn't process credit cards ... there was no flat rate to the airports ... and you doubled the fare rate as soon as you crossed the city limits -- plus you didn't have to sign on or off on an information box.  Through the 1990s it was all about entering info on trip sheets.  Now there are no trip sheets, which is both a good and bad thing.

Unlike in grammar school, I paid close attention, as Paul outlined the procedures in the limited time we had.  I mostly picked it up, remembering the fundamentals and then some.  I knew I didn't have it all down and I hoped I wouldn't get passengers early on who wanted to go to Jersey or Yonkers.  But I told myself that if I did, I'd just do my best and negotiate the foggy bits.

The dispatcher (Harry or Milton) told me to phone in whenever I was ready to take a shift.  "We have 200 cars here," he said.  "You shouldn't have any trouble getting out."