Seeing It Coming

When I say to other cab drivers that I've worked nights for 20 years and never been robbed, they either don't believe me or tell me I'm lucky. But, I'm telling the truth. I haven't been held up and I owe it all to Officer Paul Makaveckas.

Makaveckas trained us and during orientation told us that we had to pick up anybody and everybody who wanted a cab.

"But, isn't that dangerous?" I asked, "I mean, you can tell when people are trouble just by the way they move, they way they look, their gestures, they way they look at you. "

"You can't tell nuthin!" Makaveckas yelled, getting in my face like a Marine Corps drill sergeant.

"But sometimes you can see it com -"

"You can't see nuthing," Makaveckas bellowed. "You don't pick em up, it's refusal to convey!"

The reason I owe my perfect record to Makaveckas is that he started me thinking seriously about how dangerous the job could be so I decided to ignore what he told us.

I can see the point of the law. It's a product of the 60s and it's aimed at racial profiling. And, of course, you can't convict somebody of a crime because of the way they move or look. But only a fool would ignore the warning signs of an aggressive body language or a sadistic stare. There is a difference between punishing somebody and protecting yourself. Maybe such distinctions are too subtle for the law.

Racial profiling has hardly been a practice for me. I've never turned anybody down because of their race and, in fact, I've been told by innumerable large, black men that I was only cab driver who would pick them up. Contrary to stereotype, I've usually been tipped very, very well by these people.

The reason I raised my questions to the Officer in the first place was that I'd been mugged by two white junkies a couple of years before I started driving a taxi. The thing is that I saw them: I saw what they were: I knew they were dangerous: I could even see them targeting me. But I ignored the signs. Why? Because it was a lovely Sunday afternoon on Hyde Street on Russian Hill with people wandering about and I was coming home from a laundromat.

It never entered my head that I could be mugged at such a time in such a place. If it had, they never would've gotten close enough to corner me with a butcher knife. They got $6. It was well worth the price for the lessons they gave me: 1. Always be aware of your surroundings. 2. Trust your perceptions.

I have driven by people that I know have robbed other drivers. When I was working for City, the dispatcher called an order on Cortland for three guys at 2 am. I took one look at the men, drove by them and called the dispatcher, telling him not to call the order again. He called it anyway. The three guys robbed the next cab driver that came along. The dispatcher later claimed that I'd never talked to him. But, of course, the company would have been in a delicate situation whether I had or not. They might either be busted by Makaveckas for refusing to take an order or sued by the driver for putting him in harm's way.

And I guess that writing this post puts me in delicate situation. No doubt there will soon be a plethora of undercover minority cops flagging me down.

Nonetheless, always be aware of your surroundings and trust your perceptions. Your intuition is smarter than you are and swifter than the law.

Cab Stories: 1

He was 22, thin, good looking, medium height and hip. He'd always been hip. He'd been class treasurer in high school and helped edit the yearbook. He usually obtained the booze and milder drugs for his college frat parties and got laid at every other one. While his clothes - faded jeans with a hole in one knee, green turtle-neck, white jean-jacket - were a tad retro, they were hip because he wore them.

En route we had a hip conversation about Miles. He contended that Kind of Blue, which I was playing, was Davis's greatest album. I held the less conventional view of preferring Sketches of Spain. "I like the melodies," I told him. He grudgingly accepted that as a legitimate position - although an inferior one.

When we arrived at his destination, he climbed out of the back seat and came around to my window to pay. He started to hand me a ten dollar bill, then paused and said, "you know if you could really write what cab driving's like - I mean if you could really capture the experience - it would be literature."

"Well," I hesitantly started to say, "I've made a few notes here and -"

"No! - No!" he interrupted, waving his bill in front of me as to erase my words. "No - if you could really just get it down - you could create a work of genius."

He stood staring at some point over my head. If only he had the time ... if only he chose to dedicate himself to the task ... Yes! Cabbie would be his first best seller, the next avaunt on the non-fiction novel ...

"That was $7.60," I said.

"Oh, yeah - yeah," he said, remembering me. "Make it eight."

"Thanks," I said, handing back his two bills.

En raptured in his vision, he missed my mild sarcasm. "I wasn't just a documentarian," he would tell Charlie Rose, "I was one of them." His success would give him the time he needed to write his true landmark work, Ulysses as a Young Narcissist and Other Tales.

He turned and wandered across the crowed boulevard, floating through the braking cars, honking horns and screamed obscenities on the soft velvet warmth of his dreams.

(for more cab stories check out http://phantomcabstories.blogspot.com/

The Application Hearing Process - A New Set of Rules?

The July 24, 2009 hearings for medallion applicants turned out to be a radical event.

In the old days (before the MTA took over), a medallion applicant merely had to stand up before the Taxi Commission and tell them that the city needed to give him or her the medallion for some reason or other. I think I told them that they needed to give one to me because, in all humility, I was the best taxi driver there was.

The new Director of Taxis and Accessible Services, Christiane Hayashi, looked at this process and decided that it was laughably "ridiculous." She thus instituted a new procedure where a hearing officer and one of her investigators would actually look at the applicant's waybills.

The unfortunate object of this new vigor was medallion applicant Leonid Slootsky who has owned a ramp medallion for the last four years. Four years ago Slootsky worked 165 shifts and three years ago he totaled over 1200 hours but, for the last few years, he apparently decided to coast and put in only a little over 800 hours per. In the old days, that might have been okay but this is now.

Slootsky's waybills were closely examined by MTA Hearing Officer Harry Epstein and Taxis and Available Services investigator Scott Leon. On Slootsky's behalf, it should be said that neither Epstein nor Leon appeared to have the foggiest notion of what it was like to actually drive a taxi. As dilligent as they were clueless, the two of them took Slootsky's waybill apart line by line.

Epstein wanted to know why Slootsky only worked two days a week and why he started every shift with a ride at Geary and Taylor. "Is there a hotel there or something?" he asked.

Both Leon and Epstein want to know why Slootsky spend an hour or two every day waiting at the airport. Noting that he stopped taking rides an hour or two before he turned in the cab, both Epstein and Leon pared down Slootsky's time to a little over 700 hours.

The befuddled Slootsky, talking through a Russian interpreter, could only say that his wife and family worked; and promise to put in more days in the future.

I had to leave to start my shift so I didn't hear the end but I think a final determination was put off until August 14th.

As I walked out, a driver who had also watched the ceremony told me,

• "I used to tell everybody cab driving was a great job. I'm telling 'em that any more."

He had a point. According to Epstein and Leon, working is no longer enough - one has to work successfully. It isn't enough to desperately look for rides during those desperately slow recession days and nights. You have to find them.

On the other hand, both Epstein and Leon appeared to be dedicated men with inquiring, open minds. If they asked stupid questions, it was because they wanted to know how things worked. I'm sure they'll soon get up to speed and have a better sense of what it's like to drive a cab.

But the rules have changed. While it's clear that Slootsky often got his waybills stamped long after he actually quit working, such behavior would have been acceptable last year. From now on drivers will have to completely work their shifts to get their time. I don't see where that's a bad thing.

The moral of this tale is that it's a good idea to be safe. I don't have a problem because I put in at least 1,200 hours a year. I don't know if you need that many but every driver should now put in a 1,000 hours per - just to be sure.

The Independent Contract - In Sum

Over the last 30 years, the law has pretty much caught up with the Independent Contract. A series of court cases have given drivers Workers Compensation and, maybe, Unemployment. It's no longer legal for companies to demand insurance deposits from their drivers.

It's also true that I have probably romanced the virtues of being an employee. It's doubtful that, under the political climate of the last three decades, we would have been able to form a union even if we been given employee rights. Unions have hardly proven themselves to be bastions of morality either. A friend of mine, in a Longshoreman's Local, had to tip union agents to get shifts. And, the foundations of building have been poured on many an ex-Teamster.

The level of corruption seems to be about the same. On the other hand, union workers are usually much better paid.

But there are advantages to driving a cab as an Independent Contractor. It's a cash business and nobody tells you what to do. You can take radio calls or not, work the airport or not, use any system you can think of to make money and take breaks (or not) any time or any place you like. Furthermore, an economic recession is unlikely to cost you your job. All that happens is that you make less money. In fact, people laid off from other industries invariably swarm taxi companies looking for work during recessions. Most of them make less money driving cab than they had been making before but at least they make something.

Comparing lease drivers to workers in 19th Century sweat shops is also way off the mark. You can do what you want when you drive a cab and, benefits aside, taxi driving pays better than most clerical or retail jobs. The combination of the freedom and cash is what got me into the business - and what keeps me there.

However, the biggest advantage of the Independent Contract clearly goes to the companies. The ability to fire people (excuse me "cancel their leases") without cause has given cab companies way too much power and led to abuses that I've written about earlier (see Alleged Tipping and the series on the Independent Contract). Beyond that it has saved the companies huge amounts of money that they have not had to pay in the way of taxes and benefits.

The gates and gas system has also made the taxi industry recession proof. Although the taxi business is currently down (by most accounts) 30% to 50%, the companies are flourishing. Former stock brokers, computer geeks, money managers and (god knows) maybe lawyers are lining up to drive cabs. But they can't even get an application. The companies are backlogged with drivers. They aren't hiring.

I guess the question is whether or not this is a good thing. As a medallion holder, I appear to be benefitting from this system. But I wonder? Is is right for companies to be flourishing when the amount of actual business they do is in decline? Is it right for them to be protected from the laws of the marketplace?

Most the plans for "reforming" Proposition K, for instance, call for putting more taxis on the street. The people who drew up these plans act as if the current recession didn't exist. As such, these plans as disconnected from the economic realities of our time. Would this be happening if the companies were actually in the cab business instead of the leasing business?

Is the public truly being served by this system? The major complaint about the taxi service in San Francisco is that it's hard to get a taxi in the outlying neighborhoods. But a company cannot tell an Independent Contractor what to do. That would make the driver an employee. Therefore, the companies cannot assign a driver to a call or tell him or her to work a specific area or neighborhood. Because the drivers themselves are on a gate system, they cannot afford to stay in neighborhoods with little business and naturally head back toward the busy areas as fast as they can.

Because the City has not allowed companies to raise gates thus shrinking their income and to avoid legal problems arising from the current system, taxi companies are more and more going to long term leases. They give up their day to day control but they don't have to sweat the details either.

This is a big problem for dispatchers by the way. The days of FIVE in and FIVE out are becoming a thing of the past. They're lucky if the long term lease drivers toss 'em TWO a couple of times a month ... and that's how it should be.

However, it's difficult to see how the long term leases serve the public. Most of the drivers appear to work the airport and the companies have no control over them whatsoever. It's hard to envision these guys spending a lot of time in the Sunset taking radio calls.

I'm tempted to say that I think the system is broken and needs a drastic reform. In fact, in an earlier version, I did. But that's a drastic exaggeration. I got carried away by my own rhetoric.

On the other hand, the public isn't being served as well as it should be, the drivers are treated unfairly and the companies themselves might do better under a different set up.

The gate and gas system may be outdated. As it is the only way the drivers can make more money is by raising the fares and the only way the companies can make more money is by raising the gates. The fares are already among the highest in the country and it's hard to see how raising them now would do anything other than lose business. The gates are already too high for the amount of business we have.

There has to be a better way. All we need is a Solomon to figure it out.

The Independent Contract - 5

I think of "tremendous minds" as belonging to people like Verdi or Goethe or Einstein who create beauty or expand our knowledge of life, not to some geek who figured out a new way to shaft people. But there is no denying that Robert Bork's interpretation of the Independent Contract was brilliant. His decision made it possible to wipe out 150 years of labor history merely by calling a thing by a different name.

Desoto Cab still had a few union people driving for them when I worked there so I became very aware of the difference between their status and mine. The union drivers were guaranteed a minimum wage, had paid vacations and sick leave, couldn't be fired without cause and didn't tip. I, on the other hand, could lose money (although I never did.), could be charged for unfilled shifts if I took a vacation or missed a day because of illness (which I also never did. Rather than pay Desoto for nothing, I passed my diseases on to my customers.), and could have "my lease cancelled" for no reason at all.

Little by little, the charming, silver-tongued Marvin had talked most of the union drivers into signing lease agreements. My favorite story was that he told one union man that he could keep his paid vacations and the rest of it even if he became a lease driver. "Why pay money to those damn unions?" Marvin asked him. The driver couldn't think of a reason so he signed the Independent Contract. Shortly after that, he took his yearly vacation. When he returned, the sucker discovered that Marvin had cancelled his lease.

Two of the teamsters still working at Desoto were Bob Franklin and Tom, whose last name I'm ashamed to say that I've forgotten. He suffered from a degenerative disease similar to MS and was a tireless worker despite his affliction. Bob introduced me to some of the top people from both the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO but they were unable or unwilling to help us because they were fighting just keep what they had during the Reagan era and they'd already lost in court over the Independent Contract.

We decided that the only way to attack the contract was to gain "workers rights." In order to do this we drew up a petition to that effect and brought it over to Rua Graffis of a group called the Alliance to polish the final wording. The idea was that the Alliance would help us get signatures. Once we had signed up more than half the drivers, we intended to bring the petition to the Board of Supervisors and, hopefully, get them to put a measure on the ballot stating that cab companies had to give drivers "workers rights." If our plan worked, it would have been possible to organize a union.

I thought that it would be very difficult to get the petition signed. There have always been a lot of drivers, like my good friend Murai, who liked the supposed freedom of the lease and didn't want to become employees. I also thought that many drivers would be afraid to sign and that it would difficult to explain our idea to foreign drivers who didn't understand our laws.

For the safety of the drivers, we decided to try and get the signatures at the airport. The first night we showed up, most of the drivers were Indians, Pakistanis and Sikhs. I didn't know how many of them spoke English or if they'd even talk to us. I would have been happy to get 10 drivers signed up.

I nervously walked up to a Sikh and handed him the petition. He silently looked at me and then slowly read the petition. He asked me for a pen and signed it. He gave it to another Sikh driver, who read it and signed it. The two of them then explained the petition to a couple of other drivers in their own language. Both the other drivers signed it. When we left the airport a couple of hours later, we had signed up most of the people in the lot. Three weeks later, with Bob and Tom doing most of the heavy lifting, we had signed up more than half the working drivers in San Francisco.

I thought that when we added the signatures that the Alliance had no doubt gotten we would have at least 75% of the drivers on the petition. But I couldn't get ahold of Rua. For some reason she wasn't returning my calls.

However, the magic number was 50% so I got together with Cliff O'Neil, who was the first president of the UTW and knew Supervisor Roberta Achtenberg. The year was 1990. We'd hoped that she would sponsor the legislation. In fact, she was very gracious to us and enthusiastic about our idea. "Let's get the ball rolling," she told us when we left. Cliff also lined up Supervisor and future District Attorney Terence Hallinan to write the bill.

In short, it looked a like a done thing. But I was new to insider politics at the time. Weeks went by without any action. I kept calling Cliff who didn't know what was going on either. After a couple of months, I stopped by to visit him and he told me that the legislation was dead. Achtenberg was still interested but no one else was. Terence Hallinan suddenly found the idea, "too complicated." The supervisors had been told that the cab drivers of San Francisco did not want employee rights. They wanted to be independent contractors. The supes did not want to meet with us. They refused to look at our petition.

I had a thought. I called up Rua Graffis and asked her what had happened to her signatures. "We will decide what the cab drivers of San Francisco want," she declared royally and slammed the phone down on me.

I later found out that Rua had helped sabotage "employee rights" on one other occasion. When the Democrats held their convention in San Francisco in 1984, then Mayor Dianne Feinstein had offered to give the cab drivers "employee rights" if the Alliance did not protest at the Moscone Convention Center. However, Feinstein made the mistake of letting an assistant make the call. The Alliance turned Dianne down because she didn't talk to them in person. Instead Rua marched around the convention hall protesting Feinstein with about 10 other people - thus giving a sound bite to the greatest union buster in American history, Ronald Reagan.

Since I didn't want to waste my time on a politics of absurdity and impotence, I decided to follow the old tried and true adage, "if you can't lick 'em join 'em." I went down and put my name on the list to become a medallion holder.

The last few years, I've been thinking of Rua with fondness. If it hadn't been for her, I might still be a lease driver bashing my head against walls.

The Independent Contract - 4

I should emphasize again that, tipping etc aside, drivers were treated better at most other companies than at Yellow. Despite being much smaller, both Desoto and Luxor gave (and continue to give) superior radio service - largely because they kept their experienced drivers instead of firing them.

At Desoto, Marvin would even give his drivers a chance to face their accusers over complaints. If the matter was serious enough, Marvin would invite the customer to come in to discuss the complaint with the driver. Very civilized. As Marvin once pointed out in an oblique response to my labor agitating, his cab drivers were treated much better than workers toiling in sweatshops in the 1890s.

On the other hand, that's a pretty low baseline.

The arrogance with which lease drivers were (and still are) treated bordered on the surreal.

I actually interview at Luxor twice. The first time, some cowboy named Davis took my information by shouting personal and rude questions at me from across a room filled with people. He actually looked surprised when I walked out on him.

Every morning before going to work at Desoto, I'd get coffee at a place across Geary Street. Every morning when I arrived, Marvin would be sitting pontificating to several medallion holders. Since I had to pass directly by them to get to the counter, I said "hello" to them every morning. Every morning they snubbed me.

In fact, few medallion holders would deign to talk with a lease driver. I discussed the subject with another driver shortly after I started at Desoto.

• "But we're all doing the same job," I said.
• "Maybe cab drivers are just as stupid as everybody says they are," he replied.

I think I need one more macho confrontation tale to more fully illuminate the true status of the lease driver in the taxi industry. I promise that it'll be the last.

My brakes went out (as usual) at Desoto and I drove the car into the small garage to be fixed. I walked over and started to tell a mechanic what was wrong with the car. He interrupted me and screamed that I should move the effing cab out of his garage. When I hesitated, he commanded me to "do it now!"

I don't think I'd ever seen this guy before and I'd signed a contract saying that I was under nobody's control. I actually had a copy of the damn thing by then. He had no right to boss me around. I was the one losing money not him. If he'd been polite or even civil, I would've moved the the car but I wasn't about to take orders from every random smuc that came along.

I went down to talk with the dispatchers about getting another cab. A few minutes later, the mechanic showed up carrying a tire iron in his right hand. He started screaming obscenities at me and threatened to attack me if I didn't move the car.

I've never liked to fight and I grew up Irish. Through trial and error, I've developed a technique of standing motionless and staring silently at my would-be assailants, straitening up to highlight my size and forcing them to initiate the action. My father was a trained boxer so I have a good idea of what to do if I am assaulted. I use my stance to translate this.

The mechanic, hunched over and yelling threats, slowly moved in but, the closer he got to me, the more fully he understood that I was 6" taller and 4o pounds heavier than he. Eventually, as almost everyone in my adult life has, he chose another method of conflict resolution.

Now ... let's give the mechanic the benefit of the doubt. He was obviously having a bad day and lost his temper. If he'd thought about it, if he'd not been carried away by his emotions, he would have at least left the tire iron behind. Not a good move. It could've earned him hard time. Furthermore, no company - not even Yellow - would knowingly allow such behavior.

Nonetheless, this mechanic clearly thought that a lease driver's status was so much lower than his own that the driver should be under the mechanics thumb. While his actions might have extreme, his attitude is not. All the salaried workers at cab companies from the dispatchers to the bookkeepers to the secretaries to the people answering the phones have been taught to think they are superior to the lease drivers who bring in most of the money. And, they have a point. The law protects employees. Independent contractors are powerless.

The Independent Contract - 3

While conditions at Yellow cab were the worst, there was no taxi company you could work for without receiving some form of abuse. After a classic "you-can't fire-me-I-quit" squabble with one of Steele's lackeys, I went to work for Desoto.

At the time, the company was managed by Marvin Gralnick who liked to be called just plain "Marvin." However, this didn't mean that he thought of himself as one of the guys. Like many in the business, he looked straight through lease drivers as if they didn't exist - unless they were good looking women. Actually, they didn't have to be that good looking. Watching him chase woman around in his office, I often wondered why he didn't get hit with a sexual harassment suit.

But I'm digressing again.

Marvin didn't give me a copy of the lease I'd signed either. And, unlike Nate, he didn't even give me time to read it. He stared at me as I started to page through it and looked at his watch. I got the point and asked him for my copy. He said that they didn't have any at the moment but the printer would send some over the next week. I needed the job so I said, "fine."

But I thought that this had to be illegal so I decided to keep asking for my copy with the vague idea that I might be able to get an attorney interested in a class action suit. Every Monday after that, I'd go to Marvin's office before I took my cab out and brightly ask him if the he'd received the contracts from the printer yet. Every Monday, he'd give me a long, intimidating look and tell me that they still hadn't come. "It's hard to find good help these days," he told me once. This went on for five or six weeks.

Finally, when I showed up one Monday, Marvin graciously invited me into his office. He waved his hand to show me the room. It was filled with lease contracts piled desk high along the walls. "They've come," he told me. I guess he'd talked to his attorney. In all my years of agitation this was my one concrete victory - and I didn't want it. I wanted my class action suit