Rude, ignorant taxi drivers who never have change

Whenever the price of gasoline increases, taxi fares follow. Consequently, taxi drivers complain about the subsequent difficulty in finding passengers willing to pay the new price.

Just as I was feeling sorry for those poor taxi drivers, I got into a fracas with one last Saturday. I was looking for an address in Kebayoran Baru, but this taxi driver from a reputable company didn't even know where Kebayoran Baru was. Rather than spend the night going around in circles (which now costs an arm and a leg), I decided to switch to another taxi, which was fully supported by the driver. But as I was getting out, he asked me for Rp 4,000.

"I was barely in your taxi! We haven't gone anywhere!" I protested.

He started to get really agitated and aggressive, so I just left him fuming on the side of the road. He followed me, insisting that I owed him money. He gave up after he realized that I wouldn't budge, but not until he gave me a piece of his mind.

This reminded me of an e-mail from a colleague a couple of weeks ago. She was doing research on taxi drivers, and apparently I wasn't alone in thinking that these taxi drivers need a much needed and long overdue slap on the wrist. She informed me that nine out of 10 people she talked to thought taxi drivers were obnoxious individuals and had only bad things to say about them, regardless of which taxi company they worked for. It seems that even though they badly need our business, they treat it as if it's the other way around.

Following is what respondents complain about the most in order of annoyance (taxi operators, take note!):

1. (supposedly) Lack of change, and lack of effort in obtaining said change. They look at your Rp 50,000 bill and shrug, "Don't have change." Then they just turn their backs on you while you look for a nearby warung (street stall) in exasperation (who will no doubt reject your plea to change your bill to smaller denominations). We're not the ones who cannot supply the money, so why are we the ones who have to go to all the trouble?

2. Ignorant drivers. Aren't they suppose to know every back road, every nook and cranny in the city? I was once in a taxi whose driver didn't know how to get to Jl. Sudirman ("Sudirman? Where's that, mbak?"). I miss the old days when we could actually learn of shortcuts from taxi drivers, such invaluable knowledge in a city with nightmare traffic.

3. Rude taxi drivers. A colleague once asked her aspiring-to- be-in-the-Indy 500 taxi driver to slow down, when he proceeded to call her "a nag". Furious, she kept her ground and the driver promptly stopped and told my colleague to get out of his taxi, but not without demanding his fare first. When she refused, he called her names but luckily my friend got out of the situation without a scratch and didn't part with a single penny.

4. Crafty drivers who take you around in circles. They can smell innocent blood. Beware of the simple question, "Do you want to reach (your destination) from (best way) or (longer way, most likely to have awful traffic)?"

5. Shoddy taxi. Candy wrappers, orange peel, cockroaches, broken air-con. We're paying them a lot of money to spend hours in something akin to a cell in Guantanamo Bay?

6. Bad BO, equal to sleepy drivers. Sounds trivial, but not so when you have to breathe in polluted air on a hot day or undergo what I had to endure one night (a driver who hit the brakes a lot and pinched his own ear every few minutes to keep himself awake).

Krabbe K. Piting