You're the cab driver, you tell me!

The BBQ Pit
1

I am heartily sick and tired of cab drivers asking me how to get to my destination. It’s your job, fuckstick! If you can’t be bothered to learn how to do it properly, don’t do it all.

To elaborate - I live in Chicago. Once upon a time, one could hail a cab, get in said cab, tell the driver of said cab your destination, and he would take you there. Once in a while you would get an unscrupulous driver who would attempt to run up the fare by taking a less-than-direct route, but a quick direction to take a certain turn or road would usually clue the driver in that you weren’t some hick from Iowa or Wisconsin, but that you actually knew the city and he’d better not try it again. At some point, 4-5 years ago maybe, I noticed that more and more drivers would say something to the effect of, “I’m going to take Lake Shore Drive to North Ave. Is that OK?” I liked this. It gave you the opportunity to take some shortcut you might know about, and provided some modicum of cover for the driver. You couldn’t yell at him for taking the “long way” if he told you up front his intended route.

When we moved back here 2 years ago, I noticed that, “I’m planning on taking such-and-such route,” had transmogrified into, “How would you like me to go?” I took to responding, “How would you recommend going?” at which point I would usually get a satisfactory response, agree to it, and off we went. I did not like the direction this was going.

Lately I have had an unacceptably large number of cab drivers simply ask me how to get where I want to go. Huh? Don’t you know? What happens if you get someone from out of town? (I actually asked one driver this. He said he would call his friend who drove another cab, and he would give him directions). Sorry. That just doesn’t cut it. To me it’s like a chef at a restaurant asking me how to cook the evening special, or the pilot on my next flight asking me which lever retracts the landing gear. You’re a service provider - provide the goddamn service!

Lest you think I’m being unreasonable, on all of these occasions I was asking to go to the 1600 block of North Clybourn. Clybourn is a pretty major street, and everyone who has lived in Chicago for more than a couple of months comes to know that North Ave (also a fairly major street) is 1600 N. I could understand (maybe) if I was directing them to some obscure, 2-block-long side street off in the hinterlands of Chicago, but we’re talking about a major intersection. I got the impression that I would have gotten a blank stare from each of these numb-nuts if I had said, “1600 North, between 600 and 800 West.”

Makes me really, really appreciate London cab drivers. Yeah, you pay more, but those guys know the city better than the backs of their hands, and they don’t have the benefit of a grid system to work with.

And, yes, I have had some of these guys pull over so I could get out of their cab and find a new one. No, I didn’t pay them, because I didn’t get proper service. I have called the City on two of the most egregious drivers I’ve gotten lately, so I’d like to think I’m doing my part. It just feels like the overall quality of cab drivers in this city is in rapid decline.

2

I don’t mind if the taxi driver asks me my preferred route when there are obvious differences between the choices e.g. one has a toll and one doesn’t; one may be longer than the other, but have better traffic flow. But I agree that it’s quite annoying when the driver is obviously asking in order to fish for clues about how to get to the destination.

3

I heard great things about Mornington Crescent but I’ll be damned if they’d ever take me on a direct route there.

4

Don’t these guys use GPS systems? I thought that the days of cab drivers having to know their city was long gone.

5

I live in Chicago as well and have to agree with carlb. I usually get finished with work around midnight and take a cab home because of the hour. My destination is in the 6000 block of North Sheridan Road. This is a major artery on the north side along the lakefront. I always [provide the driver with the exact address AND the cross street, since it is on a corner. More often than not they will go past the building unless I tell the driver, “Slow down and turn into this driveway”.

6

I have also been experiencing this. I live on a small street, which I don’t always expect cab drivers to know. But when I tell them the major street that I live off of, it shouldn’t be so confusing.

I don’t understand why they don’t have GPS. You can get a basic one for less than $100, and I think that would be a worthwhile investment for someone who spends their days going to unknown locations.

7

I just took a cab in Chicago today and the driver asked me “you want me to take Lake Shore?” and I agreed that that would be the best way, but it did make me go wtf? What if I were a tourist and didn’t know? It seemed like a weird question. (I lived in Chicago from 2003 to 2006, so I don’t think of myself as a tourist, although I don’t live there now.)

Still, AFAIC, the worst cab drivers in the universe are in Sofia. Fucking hell. I once had a cab driver take me to COMPLETELY THE WRONG PLACE and then proceed to argue with me about whether or not that was what I’d wanted. I got out of the cab and didn’t pay him. And I was in total BFE and it was 2 am. I’ve have probably six or seven cab drivers point blank refuse to take me where I wanted to go (this once happened three times in a row; the fourth cabbie finally agreed to take me to my destination). Once I hailed a cab, and when I told the driver where I wanted to go, he told me he was off duty. And you pulled over because…? Not to mention all of the cab drivers who spent the entire rides telling me about how I needed to marry a nice Bulgarian boy and have lots of babies STFU CAB DRIVERS.

8

The suburban cab drivers all have GPS (or at least the ones in the cab service I use do) so I don’t run into that much. Even so, I’m glad I haven’t seen this when I take a cab downtown. In fact, one cabbie even asked if we were going to a particular bank when we told him we were going to X00 Blank St. - we couldn’t remember the exact address of the restaurant and gave the hundred-block address. He knew off the top of his head that there was a bank at that corner and what kind it was.

Now that I think of it, I had exactly one cabbie ask me if I had a preference about which way he took, from Midway to my house (basically head to the highway versus take regular streets).

A few years back, we had a driver who showed up with a GPS unit (very uncommon at the time) and no I-Pass box (automatically pays your tolls, extremely common in cabs then and now). That was reason to be wary, and we were right - the guy apparently didn’t understand the concept of a manual transmission. Broke down on the highway, and my husband had to show him how to use the radio handset to call for help - he’d been trying to talk into the clip side, not the mic.

9

Same thing for me (in Chicago)–I had some kid who was talking into his phone asking for directions on EVERY SINGLE CROSS STREET from O’Hare to 5400 N. Sheridan. That’s not only a major street, but you know exactly how far north it is! I finally got tired of it and just directed him the whole way. Then he asked me if I had a boyfriend and told me I was “so beautiful”. Thanks Mr. Inappropriate, I appreciate being hit on when I’m trapped in a car with a stranger. I guess it was his first day so I have a little pity, but even on your first day you ought to know how to get from the major airport to a really obvious address.

10

You are exaggerating a bit here. I didn’t know that, and I lived in Chicago for 4 years. (South Side). Any cab driver, though, should know the name of every 400-multiple road in all 4 directions. (Every road on this map) It sounds like the cabs have gotten bad. (On second look, I did know where North was, because of the North/Clybourn Red Line stop!)
Related: we recently took a cab home from Newark’s Liberty International Airport to Downtown Jersey City. There are two ways to get there: Pulaski Skyway (no toll) or Turnpike Extension (toll). It was too late before I realized that the guy took the toll road without asking first. :mad:

11

As far as the GPS goes, I think I might know why they don’t bother with them.

A couple weekends ago, I went to a meeting at the Trib, and my wife took the kids to the Museum of Science and Industry. She dropped me off a couple of blocks south of the Trib and found her way to the museum okay, but on her way back, the GPS went entirely crazy on her. It told her to go up Lake Shore Drive to Wacker, which would have been fine, except that once she was on Lower Wacker, it had no idea where to go.

She ended up driving all over the Loop, trying to get back to Michigan. It kept “recalculating” the directions – she’d be driving along, it would tell her to turn left in .5 miles, then all of a sudden it would tell her to turn left now, at least once the wrong way down a one-way street. It took her an hour and a half to get to me, and somehow she ended up north of the Trib. I finally had to catch sight of her car going south on Michigan and tell her where to turn so I could catch up to her.

Ironically, at one point, it left her stuck in traffic facing a Garmin storefront. She nearly ripped the GPS off the dash and chucked it out the window.

12

I’m glad I not only live on a major road but near a well known intersection by virtue of of being one of the four corners of a giant city park, so cab drivers tend to know it. I have still had to give directions a few times though.
I don’t trust gps in this city - I have twice been with friends who rely on it and both times it sent us along crazy routes that made no sense, and seemed entirely unaware of the multitudes of one way streets not to mention all the places where you cannnot legally make left turns. I also thought that trying to cross downtown on st. Catherine street at 1 am on a Saturday night was bad advice.

13

Since we’re in a pit thread about cab drivers…

I’ve had (mostly) good experiences with American Taxi, a Chicago-area suburban cab service. Their automated system is easy to use. You’re at the airport, you call, they assign a cab number, you go outside, and in a few minutes your cab pulls up. No prob, usually.

So two weeks ago my wife and I are back from a trip. I call American from O’Hare and get assigned to cab # 954. We step outside and my phone rings. It’s the driver, a man with a middle-eastern accent, who tells me he’s “2 to 3 minutes away.”
“OK,” I say. “we’ll be right here.”
10 minutes go by. It’s midnight on a Friday, so there shouldn’t be any traffic issues. But I give the benefit of a doubt and wait another 5 minutes. No cab. So I call American back, and there’s a menu option to hear the “status of your order.” I choose the option and the voice tells me that “the cab is at the pickup location.” I look around. No, it isn’t.
So I decide at this point I’d like to speak to a person. This is where Amercan’s system breaks down. A seemingly endless array of menu choices does not seem to include one that lets you speak to a live operator. Pressing 0 returns you to the main menu. :mad:
I finally decide on the option “to cancel your order.” Then I hang up and order again. We get assigned another cab, that cab shows up in a timely manner, and we are driven home uneventfully.

Though, while waiting on the second cab, guess what? Yep, 954 shows up. It’s now a good 30 minutes since I first called. Furthermore, 954 is not being driven by a middle-eastern man, but by a blonde woman. I can only speculate what the hell was going on here, but I wanted no part of it. We made no eye contact with 954’s driver and she pulled away in short order.

American received an e-mail the next day about it, but of course we’ve gotten no reply. I may need to re-think my cab company needs in the future.

14

I usually take American Taxi, as well, and have only had one or two issues. The main issue I’ve had is with cabs other than my assigned number trying to persuade me into their car instead to screw some other driver out of the fare.

15

London cabbies are the shit. Worth every penny.

16

ahem :dubious: The rest of your rant I agree with. F.I.B.

17

The first time my family went to Europe, we were total travel n00bs, and I was eight. Neither of my parents spoke any kind of foreign language or had any real experience navigating in strange places - my dad had been to Saudi Arabia on business, but when you go places on business like that you get driven places and you don’t have to work it out on your own.

So we get a cab, and ask to go to the Eiffel Tower. If you are a Paris cab driver that has got to be the number one place people want to be taken to, right? He dumped us, like, a mile away (now I realize where - clear on the other side of Les Invalides, a long walk around) and said “This good!” and wouldn’t move until we paid him and got out. It still pisses my dad off to think about it and it was more than 20 years ago. We went back maybe nine or ten years ago and still remembered exactly where that guy left us when we passed it. “Honey! Isn’t this the place you almost strangled that cab driver?”

18

I’m increasingly seeing this in Toronto, as well. I used to tell cabbies where I lived, along with cardinal directions from the nearest major intersection – West of Keele, North of Sheppard – and they might ask me which route I preferred, since there are two relatively obvious ones, but more and more they just stare blankly at me until I give them specifics.

When I’ve just told you the nearest major intersection, you should, at very least, be able to get there without asking for more information. It’s the crossroads of two high traffic, high prominence streets.

The real moment of WTF?!? came when I caught a cab home from the subway station nearest my house – that’s usually not a problem, since those cabs work the local area, and are usually pretty familiar with places – and the guy asked me how to get there. The subway station is ON SHEPPARD. How hard can it possibly be to find Keele & Sheppard from there? You’ve already got one of the streets down cold, since it’s the only place you can go from the parking lot you’re parked in. Do you really not even know the name of the nearest major streets to where you wait for fares?

19

Yeah, I’m noticing this a lot in Toronto as well.

20

I’ve noticed more drivers asking for directions as well. I appreciate it when it’s around rush hour and I’m taking a cab from the Loop to Lincoln Park, and they ask, “Do you want to take Lake Shore or Clybourn?” I usually ask them to steer clear of going west on Belmont, which is seriously the worst.

When I’m not sure where I’m going, I give the driver the major cross streets and say something like “two blocks north of Sheridan and Belmont.”