Fuel Frustration

Now being a taxi driver has recently been named as one of the ten most stressful jobs so it’s best to try and be calm and placid all the time whilst working, or else they say that the stress will eventually kill you.

Now nothing usually gets to me, I tend to try and ignore the bad driving and rudeness of the minority who are the morons of the road.

But one thing really gets my teeth gnashing and my rarely used stock of swearwords in full flow.

It was a busy day, I was low on fuel, and so during a lull I headed into my usual supermarket garage to top up the diesel.

But it looked as if every other driver in town had the same idea at the same time and all the lanes were backed up.

After doing the usual dip zoo magazoo to pick which lane to wait in I joined a line of cars.

Much later I was next in line and it was finally about to be my turn at the pump.

The driver of the car in front of me had got into their car and I moved eagerly forward ready to take its place.

The driver happened to be a woman but I have had the same maddening experience from both sexes.

 She firstly checked her hair and makeup in the mirror and then carefully stowed away her credit cards cash and sweeties etc, into her handbag.

 I started to edge forward as she put her bag on the floor and started to fasten her seat belt.

 But after fiddling about finding the buckle and adjusting the belt to her liking, she then found that her keys were not in the ignition, so it was off with the belt and back out with the full contents of the bottomless bag.

By this time, all the other lanes had emptied but another car had come up close behind me and I was helplessly trapped not earning and squirming with frustration.

A good few minutes later and the missing keys were found, the seatbelt was fastened, and my hopes were again rising.

Only to be cruelly dashed when a final mirror check revealed some defect in her eye make-up.

Yep you guessed it the make-up was in the bottomless bag on the floor and so it went on with her still blissfully unaware of the queue behind her.

That is until she noticed that my taxi was now only a coat of paint away from her car and that I was revving the engine and mouthing curses about her and all her ancestors before her.

She drove of looking quite flustered, I filled up whilst taking deep breaths, and considering a change of career perhaps a Buddhist monk or a soot juggler eh!

  

 

Arithmetic

On a bright Sunday morning, the job was to pickup from one of the more upmarket Lake District country house hotels and takes some folks the 100miles to Manchester airport.

The luggage was loaded and my fare turned out to be a German couple and an English guy in his thirties who had been attending a posh wedding at the hotel.

They were all flying back to Tenerife where they were living and working.

They seemed to be a reasonably intelligent and sophisticated group and the ride went quickly and smoothly enough, with the couple chatting and the guy playing with his i-phone.

That is until we reached the airport and its unloading point. Now as the airport is very busy and security is very tight only a few minutes are allowed to unload before you are firmly moved on.

The only thing which needed to be done before we unloaded the luggage was to quickly pay me the £90 owed for the taxi fare.

 They were it turned out splitting the fare between the couple and the single guy and so they each had some notes in their hands.

I could not believe it when the single guy instead of handing over the cash appeared to be concentrating on sending a text on his i-phone.

This went on for a full two minutes and I was getting more and more stressed thinking about the parking fine that I would surely be getting.

But then looking a bit closer at his beloved phone I realised with amazement that he was actually using the calculator function to try and figure out half of £90.

“Forty five” I blurted out a bit too loudly whilst rolling my eyes and shaking my head in exasperation.

Believe it or not, he then actually finished checking this simple sum on his phone for a further thirty seconds before handing over the cash.

Don’t think I have ever come as close to swearing before.