IN JEST THIS Melvin Durai
It’s rare that you’ll find a cabbie who isn’t willing to talk
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Uber, the mobile-app-based transportation network, is now available in 55 countries, including India, allowing just about anyone in these countries to turn themselves into taxi drivers. I wouldn’t mind doing it myself, not just to earn a little extra money, but also to meet people. My wife wouldn’t let me, of course.
“Focus on being a good writer,” she’d tell me. “Leave the driving to people who know what they’re doing on the road.”
It’s true that I don’t always know what I’m doing on the road, especially when she’s sitting next to me. But if knowing what you’re doing were a requirement, there’d be far fewer taxi drivers on the road – and even fewer Uber drivers. The latter are often highly trained people, but they’ve been trained to do other things.
Take Cici Xu of Shanghai, China, for example. She’s an accountant who has taken up Uber driving as a hobby. I’m sure taxi drivers wish they could do that – take up accounting as a hobby. Who knows, maybe someone will develop an Accountant App. If you need some accounting done, just enter your details on the app – and a taxi driver will show up at your door with a pencil and calculator.
Of course, you need a lot more education to be an accountant than a cabbie. But professional taxi drivers do have many years of experience on the road. They know exactly how to get from one place to another using the longest route possible. Cici is probably learning to do that too, not because she’s trying to get more money from her customers, but because she wants to keep chatting with them as long as possible.
As she told America’s National Public Radio (NPR), money isn’t the reason she drives. “I hope to meet different people,” she said, adding that she wants to “make life more colourful and get to know a different Shanghai. I’ve now discovered, I’m addicted to this work.”
If Uber driving is addictive, she’d better not talk about it so openly, or else the Chinese government might ban it. “Very addictive, not good for you,” the government’s official press release will say. “More healthy to be accountant.”
Cici, who drives for People’s Uber, a non-profit ride-sharing service, considers chatting with customers a cathartic experience. “Sometimes customers help us, other times, we help customers,” she told NPR. “Uber provided us with this kind of platform, although it’s not what they had in mind.”
Driving has become a major social outlet for her, an opportunity to meet people, have great conversations, and, if they insist, drop them off somewhere. “I feel my life now is very rich,” she said. “I used to dread long holidays. I would be very scared of them, because I would feel very lonely. But now, I’m not afraid.”
I understand how she feels. Although I’ve never driven professionally, I’ve occasionally used taxis and always enjoyed the conversations with drivers. It’s rare that you’ll find a cabbie who isn’t willing to talk. Most have been chatting with customers for so long, they just do it automatically, so naturally and effortlessly. You take a seat in a Chicago cab and the driver immediately groans and says, “The Bulls are going nowhere, the way they’re playing. And the Bears – don’t even ask me about the Bears.We need a new football team.”
If you’re not a sports fan, you just nod and try to make a transition into a new topic. “You know what else we need? Wider roads. Traffic is really slow today, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s extremely slow,” he says, shaking his head vigorously and making you think that your ploy worked. “Not as slow as the Bears though. I’m telling you, we need a new football team.”
