Fiction: A Little Slow

By Mather Schneider

 

Our taxi dispatching computer system goes down, right in the middle of a Friday noon rush. Blank screen on my cab monitor. I give it a couple taps at the red light on 22^nd and Columbus. Definitely a home-base wide failure. I pull into Reid Park and phone Jim, the “operations manager.” Everybody has his number so it’s not like I’m special or anything. I ask him if I should go pick up some voucher fares that I know of, even though I can’t receive the official orders from the computer system. 

He laughs and says, “Sure, go ahead, but you won’t be paid.” 

I sit in my cab and watch the ducks on the lagoon swimming in the scum. They hop out of the water sometimes and waddle around, the dummies. There are some geese too. I have to take a piss and get out to find a tree. The bathrooms are too far off on the other side of the lagoon, and they’re always full of homeless people anyway. I unzip my pants but a goose is sitting there by the tree. She is sitting on her nest, and isn’t happy to see me. Then the male goose comes running at me from somewhere. I kick at him until the female goose gets up and starts squawking too and then finally they both back off. I feel bad for interrupting their lifestyle, but I figure I’m as much of nature as they are. I piss behind the tree and when I finish I look into the goose’s nest, to get a glimpse of the eggs. But there are no eggs. Instead, there are 3 plastic water bottles. Three lousy dirty plastic water bottles, mostly empty. They’re arranged neatly. I wonder why she needs to sit on them to keep them warm when it’s 102 degrees out. The lady goose and her hubby are eyeing me and walking back and forth. 

“Calm down, ya nutbags.” 

Back in my cab, I see a fleet-wide message on the monitor: “SYSTEM IS DOWN. IF YOU KNOW OF ANY VOUCHERS THAT NEED TO BE PICKED UP PLEASE DO THAT.”

I pick up two voucher passengers that I know of and I take them home. I know where they are because I took them to their appointments in the morning, before the system went down. I make note of their names and where I pick them up and where I take them. I try to pick up a few more but some other cab driver always beats me to them, and the whole afternoon is a bust.

Back at the taxi yard at the end of my shift, I park the vehicle just in time to see the system come back online. I’m a little late because the car-wash I usually go to was blocked by some cops and I had to find another. I go into the office to talk to Jim to see about getting paid for these unregistered vouchers. Jim is maybe 30, with a head that looks like a peeled watermelon wobbling on his flabby Irish freckled body. He’s hob-knobbing with another cab driver in his office while I stand at the door. 

Without looking at me, he says, “Yes.” 

I say nothing. 

“YES?” he says again. 

“Are you talking to me?” I say.

Jim looks at the other cab driver and rolls his eyes. 

“Well, I’m not talking to Ronald Reagan!” 

The other cab driver thinks that’s hilarious. “Talk to you later,” he says to Jim as he passes me and leaves. 

“What can I do you for?” Jim says.

“I picked up a couple of vouchers when the system was down….” I say.

“HOLD ON, HOLD ON!” Jim says. “I’m gonna need their names and addresses of where you picked them up and where you dropped them off.”

“I wrote them down….” I start to hand him my paper and he looks at it like it’s got feces on it.

“No no no,” he says. “There’s a stack of forms right out there in the lobby. I need you to fill one out. Pronto. Shit, I thought I had done all of these. You must be the last one. A little slow, are we?”

“I guess so.”

I go out to the lobby and get the form. It says: Driver name. I put my name. Driver ID number: I put that. Address of pick up. I put that down. I have to shake my pen, but it still works. Address of destination. I put that down too. Then I go back to Jim’s office. There’s another cab driver grab-assing with him this time. I stand at the door again. 

“Yes?”

He looks at me like he’s never seen me before.

“I filled out the form.”

“I hope you did it right. Give it here.”

I hand it to him. 

“Name?” he says.

 “Matt. Matt Glasford.”

“Your ID number will suffice.”

“57844. It’s right there on the form.”

“I’m a little busy here, kay?”

“Okay.”

“So, this may take a while.”

“Should I wait here?” I look at a couple of chairs against the wall.

“Well, why don’t you wait in the lobby, kay? Thanks for your patience. Thanks for all you do.”

“Thanks for all you do” was his latest feel-good phrase. I think he learned it on a company junket trip to Vegas about employee morale. Us drivers would get text messages every day explaining the latest details of how the company was going to screw us in the bung hole, and at the end of every text message it said, “Thanks for all you do!” 

I walk out to the lobby and sit down in one of the hard plastic chairs. A vending machine stands in the corner of the bright room. Pretzels. Cookies. Chips. Fat Donny from the “safety” department comes out of his office and puts some quarters into the machine, gets himself a candy bar. He doesn’t even look at me, goes back to his office where he is probably busy writing a memo about the correct way to put a cab in reverse or the importance of turn signals. All cab drivers are morons is his motto. And he’s not far off.

I hear Jim yelling from his office: “HEY! HEY!”

A minute goes by, then he yells again: “HEY! MARK!”

I stand up and walk over to his office.

“Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

“It’s Matt.”

“Oh, sorry. Look, you wrote these trips down wrong.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, I have no idea who you picked up but these people are not on the voucher system.”

“They’re regulars. I’ve picked them up for years.”

“See for yourself.”

I walk around his desk and look at his computer. He reeks of booze. 

“There it is,” I point. “Debbie Macyntire. 630 N. Alvernon.”

“Oh,” he says. “What’s the other one?”

“Doug Mann. 6799 E. Carondelet.”

“Ok, got it. This darn system. I can’t wait until we get the new system up and running.”

In the 4 years I’ve worked at this cab company the “system” has been changed 3 times, each time with zero improvement. But each time the system is about to change, the management creams themselves with excitement, sends out memos and text messages about how the new system will revolutionize our world. This is the system they use in London! This system will eliminate all errors! But with each new system there is a new variety of problems, and the drivers are the ones who get fucked. Lease hikes to pay for the new system. Dispatch fees to pay for the new system, to pay the salaries of the 22-year-old computer geeks who are hired to upkeep the new system. Management goes to seminars in Tahoe to learn how to use the new system. 

“New system huh? Boy that will be great.”

“Oh, man, it’s gonna change everything. Top of the line!”

“Just like the last time.”

“This may take a while,” Jim says. “I’ll call you.”

I head out to the lobby again. 

“Thanks for all you do!” he says.

“You too!”

I sit down in another plastic chair this time, just to change things up. There’s a suggestion box on the counter, next to the vending machine. I’m sure whichever managerial jerk-off came up with the idea of a suggestion box got a raise. Next to the suggestion box is a stack of little pieces of paper that say: “What is your suggestion? How do you feel this suggestion will facilitate company efficiency?” I’m sure someone suggested that second part, probably a college graduate. When the suggestion box appeared a few months ago, I put in some suggestions. Prioritize airport runs, I suggested. Install a coin-operated vacuum cleaner for the cabs. Reward safe drivers. All of which were ignored. One day a few months back, I wrote: GO FUCK YOURSELVES, folded it in half and dropped it in. The next day we received a fleet-wide message on our monitors: THE SUGGESTION BOX IS FOR SERIOUS SUGGESTIONS ONLY!!!

I hear Jim yelling again: “HEY! YOU-HOO! MARTIN!”

I walk over to his office. 

“You’re all set!” 

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Next time try to come in a little earlier.”

I walk out of his office and down the hallway to the cashier’s cage-window, where for once there is no line. The day-drivers are gone home and the night-drivers are just out. The scowling beast is torn from her forkfuls of microwave mac-n-cheese and rolls her chair over the linoleum floor to slide me my dirty money. 86 bucks. Four 20s and six singles. One of the 20s has a rip in it, halfway through the president’s face.

 

 

 

 

 

Mather Schneider divides his time between Tucson, Arizona and northern Mexico. He has several books available including his first novel, The Bacanora Notebooks (Anxiety Press) and the recently released book of stories, Port Awful (Anxiety Press). He works as an exterminator.