Vegas Taxi Driver

Since Moonbeam has still not posted a new blog, here is another old email I wrote to a friend a few years back....

Las Vegas.  Everyone there expects to be tipped regardless of the quality of work they perform.  I used to be a waiter, so I understood the importance of tips in a service industry. However, I also understood the amount of the tip was in direct relation to the quality of work.  In other words, if you are bad at your job, you don't get tipped well.

Anyways....

I was leaving the Venetian Casino at 4:00 pm to get to my hotel (still needed to pick up my luggage) and then to the airport (flight left at 5:30 p.m.).  So, I hop into the cab and say "Alexis Park, it is across the street from the Hard Rock." 

"Yep, I know exactly where it is" replies the female driver.  (I would like a female driver joke, but that is too easy.) 

So I get in the cab, she turns on the meter and off we go.  I notice she is going a slightly different route than the other taxi drivers have been going all weekend, but still the correct general direction. She then pulls up to... say it with me...

THE WRONG HOTEL. Nice.

"This is the wrong hotel,"  I say.  "My hotel is across the street from the Hard Rock.  This nowhere near the Hard Rock."

So we get back on the street and into a traffic jam. She pulls into the back parking lot of Hard Rock where traffic is stopped. The METER IS RUNNING and she says it should only take about 10 minutes to get through here (mind you "here" is a parking lot").  I am not happy.  A 7 minute drive has now turned into a 30 minute ordeal because she went to the wrong location.

"Let me out here, I will walk the last half mile." I say.

The meter says $11.70. I give her a ten and a five and say "give me two back."

Mind you, this weekend every cab driver was routinely tipped two-three bucks for 10 minutes of work, and by "work," I mean driving me to the proper location.  This driver says "how about something for your driver?"

My first response was to say "bite me." Nevertheless.

First off, "my driver"?? Seriously? It's not like I personally picked this woman to driver me around Vegas for a week. She is not "my driver."

Second, I HATE when people try to shame me into doing ANYTHING. Her intent was to make me feel like an ass and give her more money. So I responded, "tell you what, next time when you drive me to my
chosen destination, don't run up the fare by having us sit in a traffic jam in the wrong location AND I don't have to walk the final 1/2 mile to my hotel, I will give you a tip."

Maybe I should have just sucked it up and gave her a tip because obviously she needs it more than I do.