The last couple of weeks have been a long hard slog.
Recently I have had to double my efforts to keep pace with my outstanding bills.
Being self-employed you have to try to anticipate rainy days, and unexpected bills which heaps a little more pressure on you. So when I woke on Monday morning, I was already £50 shy of my target from the week before. Over breakfast the missus voice shrilled, “There’s a message on the answer phone for you”.
It was a voice from my friendly council office demanding I pay a bill with immediate effect. Paying bills are part of life but on this occasion there was to be no extension so I had to go into the reserve pot. I started the day by taking some children to school on return I got on to the taxi rank. I was sitting in my cab awaiting my next customer and noticed another cab had pulled up. Well they do say bad news comes in threes. The guy behind me had done some work the previous week and was duly owed payment. It had totally escaped me.
But now I had to fork out another lump of dosh. Doh! And it was only Monday lunchtime.
On Saturday evening my first customers were a young lad and his girlfriend and I could tell straight a way when they got in my cab what I was getting they both wore a smile and freely engaged me in conversation. When I got them to Penwortham I commented to them, “If all my customers were like you two, this would be the best job in the world”. Sadly not everyone who enters the cab wears a smile. Later on in the evening I took a fare to Fulwood and could hear in the back one woman comforting another who was crying and in a distressed state. I was starting to sympathise with her a little by the time we reached the destination.
When we stopped I got out and opened the door, as I always do, to help in case they slip or fall. I believe it adds a personal touch in terms of seeing someone face-to-face rather than just the back of my head.
As the women who was doing the comforting got out she thanked me. The one who was crying in the back, now decided she wasn’t paying me as I was seemingly intimidating her. Obviously drink had taken its toll, and the woman who got out first told her to get out the cab, stop being rude and I was simply trying to help. This women was good looking and well dressed but once she opened her mouth it was pure poison.
I was now at the end of my night’s work and could not be bothered with any more of this tripe. I stepped back from the cab and this seemed to have the desired effect. Now the cry baby was ready to pay and get out but as she asked me to help her step down from the cab I wasn’t feeling sorry for her, but rather embarrassed.
She jokingly asked me if I had a red carpet for her to walk on to her front door. Is it any wonder why sometimes I get perplexed dealing with people?
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