Dung Beetle

A nice easy job picking up from the local hospital and ten miles up the road to Ulverston, or so I thought!

My fare was waiting in the foyer shoehorned into what must have been a specially strengthened jumbo size wheeled chair. I would guess that she would have been maybe between 28st (390lb) and 30st (402lbs) and had her right arm in plaster and stuck out at an extreme right angle.

She was with her mother who at maybe 4ft 10in and 6st (84lbs) was the complete opposite to her in every way.

I can’t wheel her declared the mother and looked at me expectantly, so I took a deep breath and started to shove as hard as I could on the back of the wheeled chair. At first, it would not budge and so I closed my eyes and gave it all I had and was rewarded with some movement. I opened my eyes when the victim began shouting at me and found that all I had managed to achieve was turning her on the spot three times. Mother pointed out that one of the wheels still had its brake on so I released that and prepared to set off again.

By this time, the ladies of the WRVS had evacuated the rest of the patients from the foyer and were comforting them with tea and biscuits.

 Off I set with the huge load squealing and shouting directions looking like a dung beetle pushing an elephant turd up an anthill.

When I finally reached the taxi with my Convoi Exceptionnel and I was pondering just how I would load her without any mechanical assistance, she popped up out of the chair like a whale breaching the ocean and shrieked “I can walk you know it’s my bloody arm that’s broken”

With that, she climbed into the front seat of the now lopsided groaning taxi.

I set of staggering back with the chair wondering why she waited for me to push her in the chair when she could walk and why I was daft enough to do it!  

Mother was sat very quiet in the back and daughter sat waiting to be belted up. This was never going to happen even if I could reach round her the belt would never have stretched the vast distance.

Next was the problem of releasing the handbrake which was hidden beneath some unknown part of the daughter’s anatomy, this was achieved with much embarrassed and apologetic fumbling and straining.

“I was ran over by a truck,” the daughter announced when we had set off, now being a sensitive sort of guy I didn’t follow my first instinct and ask her if the truck driver survived, but I couldn’t help but wonder.

Daughter had a loud shrill sort of voice that just didn’t seem to want to stop talking at me. After a mile or two mother quietly tried to interrupt her to tell me directions to the place they were going. This seemed to be a big mistake as daughter shrieked “can’t I bloody talk now you old cow” and this started a full scale argument between them for the next nine miles of pure hell.

Every time daughter shouted at mother, she turned round to face her in the back and in doing so punched me with the heavily plastered arm.

I was mentally exhausted and black and blue by I finally gratefully dropped them both off.

Some days I would rather be a dung beetle!      

999 Taxi

Well it seems that the NHS now want cabbies as well as transporting patients home when they are still in a lot of cases desperately unwell now want us to attend 999 calls as well.
Not a lot of us have any sort of medical training or experience so if this is true then we can expect serious consequences.
I have had many cases of transporting discharged patients home and being more than a little worried about how they would cope when they got home. Some are brought to the taxi in wheelchairs and struggle to stand to get into the taxi. Then we have a struggle to help them out at the other end sometimes into a cold house without any way of preparing hot food for themselves.
We do what we can but at the end of the day we are neither qualified or paid to go beyond just driving the taxi. The other big issue is that if we do enter the patients property then we are not insured and are wide open to accusations of dishonesty or worse.    

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2513856/Dial-999-TAXI-How-stretched-ambulance-services-rely-cabbies-police-firefighters-pick-patients.html#socialLinks

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One of this weeks fares was two ladies, one was elderly and in a wheelchair and the other was able bodied and in her early 50s. I picked them both up from a house in the Town Centre and took them home where upon asking for the fare of £4.20p I was given a £10 note and told to take £7 out of it.

What a generous tip I thought to myself and it was too. I got £7 for a £4.20p fare. I opened the boot of the car and removed the ladies wheelchair. She didnt need it for short distances as she could walk a little bit so her friend insisted on taking the wheelchair in so in effect all I had to do was put in in the boot of the car and take it out at the destination and this earned me the tip.

The elderly lady thanked me for taking her wheelchair and went on to tell me that she felt a burden to people and always paid the extra for drivers to carry her wheelchair. She said she knew she didnt have to pay the extra but felt guilty if she didn't as the drivers are so helpful.

This got me thinking that its really nice to have praise for our drivers but why should an elderly disabled person feel compelled to give a large tip just because thet are in a wheelchair?

Its not right that they should feel like this and I suppose its down to the individual driver if they accept the tip. If you do accept it then you feel as if you've got extra because she is disabled. If you don't accept the tip then you offend the person that's giving it you, so you cant really win.

I just don't think its right that elderly or disabled people that need a little help from the driver should feel they have to tip a lot more as a way of saying thank you. After all, helping our customers in and out the car with or without any luggage is all part of the job description and people like this shouldn't have to feel compelled to pay more.

We don't charge any extra for wheelchairs and never will do. Its all part of the service that we provide. We look after the customer but some customers that feel they have to give a large tip because we took their wheelchair and helped them with it.

As in her words and not mine "You took my wheelchair and lifted it in and out the car for me and I feel guilty that you have to do this and I dont want to be a burden to anyone so please take it". were her exact words.

I didnt want to take the extra money after hearing this story and tried to give her it back but she insisted and told me that if I didn't take it then she would feel guilty about asking for my help.