Death Cab, no Cuties
I always enjoy my conversations with taxi drivers. From the land where kingdoms unite to my tanah tumpah darah, I’ve seen the gamut of topics.
The topics vary from personal anecdotes, politics (a pet topic with Malaysian taxis), food, economy, finance, and entertainment even.
For purposes of this post, I will confine it to my Malaysian experience. Prior to my becoming a pupil, fortunately or not, I’ve had little experience with taxis. (In hindsight, I think rather fortunately. I am beginning to despise the way they conduct their services.)
I take the taxis quite frequently these days. It gives me breathing space while I rush from X to Y and Z (these variables being the laugh-house in Duta, Dante’s Paradise and Mark Antony wannabes).
For people in the service industry, the taxi drivers are a very opinionated lot. And more often than not they’re very intelligent and sadly not much credit is being given to them for being ambassadors of the country. They are also a good gauge of how civilised a country is. They will surely find jobs being a politician or lawyer here if the stress of driving a car ever gets to them. While I find this to be refreshing and progressive for our society, it’s the bad lot of them that really gets to me. Of late, these taxi drivers are painting a very bad picture of our country.
What bad eggs do you mean? It’s the lot of them that refuses to take passengers to certain “unprofitable” areas, the ones that refuse to use the meter and the cursed ones that commit crimes. I am lucky I have not met the last category though I am beginning to feel that the first and second are merely subset of the third category.
Semantics aside, I do not understand why the passengers are being literally taken for a ride (pun and all) by their absolutely unreasonable and despotic, I might add, conduct. Sure, I get the logic of not wanting to take passengers to the less-profitable-than-usual places, but if every single taxi thinks the same way, why not just have the taxis function like an LRT ferrying passengers from say KLCC to KLSentral and go nowhere else. This is ridiculous. Cab-rank rule does not exist! (Not that it ever did) The Union/government should do something about this. The drivers tried explaining to me about how they have to pay their daily rents before they may count their profits. Big companies get the licence in bulk and then they “sub-let” their licences to the various individuals. I think there should be an NGO similar to the Bar Council or something of the same to properly address the grouses and problems these individuals are facing. The customers are the ones left taking the brunt of this joke of a system.
Lest I forget, I also totally hate the drivers who charge a flat rate quotation whenever you tell to take you to such and such a place. Reasons for this may be like the above, where the place is not so profitable, or that they’re just eager to pull a fast one on desperate passengers. Given a choice, no one would take them but I pity those who are desperate. Especially the foreigners, rich and poor tourists alike. Immigrants (legal or otherwise) too!
Let me not even go to the final category; taxi drivers who commit crimes like rape and robbery. I’ll have them flogged alive and then fed to the crocodiles.
I have had foreign friends who complain about the taxis here. Heck, I complain about them. They should start making taxi jokes soon. Now I just need to start packing a Glock before I hail any taxis here.
