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Please Recite The Following To Your Cab Driver Whenever Necessary This Summer

Listen: I know you guys don’t make a lot of money and that you work very hard, and on these accounts, you do have my sympathy. However, at this stage in the game, for you to bitch and moan about me using a credit or debit card — years after the system was introduced and a week after you whacked every customer with an unannounced $1 surcharge — suggests to me that you may be more comfortable in a line of work that is cash-only. Furthermore, all of you guys need to stop acting like that dumb hose can actually pump any meaningful level of air conditioning into the back seat, and just let me roll down the windows already. You can now feel free to resume tending to your family by Bluetooth, and I will try to un-anger myself in time to tip you. Also, stop acting like you don’t know where things in Fishtown are. Thank you.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 13th, 2011 at 11:16 am.

  • stbenjamin

    Oh god, it’s like your read my mind

  • http://unbreaded.com mikeyil

    100% agreed but good luck trying to get most of them to understand that level of English.

  • Timo

    I would consider what my options were before saying any of this out loud. Its not really “whacking” people for a dollar if it had to approved by the state bureaucracy first.

  • barryg

    I am not familiar with this definition of “unannounced.”

  • tips

    @barryg: Well, Comic Book Guy:

    - we’ve yet to see anything posted about it in actual taxis
    - to our knowledge, no press release went out about it
    - that one Metro story, the reporter basically found out about it by accident, if memory serves.

  • barryg

    @tips I agree that it was underreported and on short notice, but it was covered by at least Fox, NewsWorks, and Philly.com; they all had statements from the PPA. Historically you are usually a week behind on real news if you cover it at all, I don’t know why you want to play this game. That’s not a criticism btw, I don’t care that you don’t cover current events well.

  • tips

    All of that was after the Metro story. It looked to me like PPA never had any intention of saying anything about it. So… read my earlier comment again. Also, you. Ugh.

  • crunch

    the reason cabbies don’t like to pick up people who pay with cards is that since you pay at the end, if he drives you 20 blocks and your card gets declined, the cab driver has to decide whether it’s worth it to call the cops and sit around an hour to get his $10 or just let you go and eat the fee.

    so when you’re looking for someone to be angry at because you can’t pay with your card, don’t look at the cab driver. he’s just protecting himself. look at the shiftless little shitclowns all over the city who can’t remember if they paid their visa bill or not.

  • barryg

    @crunch, bullshit–usually they don’t know you’re paying with a card until the end, and then you get a sob story about how the machine is broken or some such. They just want the cash in hand and don’t want every dollar on the books.

  • Timo

    The alternatives are DUI, riding your bicylce on the trolley tracks, or taking Septa Night Owl service. Good luck with each of those. It might be better to cough up the buck.