So You Want to Be a Taxi Driver?

If you want to be a taxi driver, my best advice to you is to go to Orlando, Florida. The qualifications are minimal. You don't need to speak English. You don't need to know where restaurants are. You don't need to know how to operate the cab's GPS system. You don't need to know how to work the navigation system on your phone, either. The only thing you have to know is how to turn on the meter. (You don't even have to know how to turn it off - even when you are hopelessly lost and have parked in a shopping center parking lot so your customers can find the place on their smart phones.)

Our first experience with an Orlando taxi driver was when we wanted to go to BJ's Brewhouse at The Loop. The Loop is a shopping center in the Orlando/Kissimmee area. It is so big that it is on both sides of the road. In fact, if you Google "The Loop Orlando", you will learn that The Loop is the "most unique and exciting shopping, dining and entertainment experience in Florida". You would think that a cab driver would know where it is. Amazingly, they do not. But given that the cab driver in question couldn't tell time, I'm not sure why I was surprised. (We'd asked for the cab at 8:30. He turned up at 6:45. No one was ready.)

Enough of that cab company! We'll try another one. We decided that I should call because everyone else has a British accent. (Not sure why that makes a difference when the taxi drivers don't speak either American or British English.) Anyway, when I called, I gave him our address in Orlando and told him that we'd like to be picked up in time to arrive at Tarantino's Italian Restaurant at 7:30. Then I asked him what time he needed to pick us up. The answer? 6:30 or 7:00. That's a half hour difference. We're not going across country. I would expect a 5 or 10 minute range, not 30 minutes. We just had to be on high alert because we didn't actually know when he was coming.

He picked us up a bit before 7:00 and as it turns out, he had absolutely no idea where Tarantino's Italian Restaurant was. When it became clear that he didn't actually know where he was going, (driving around the block multiple times is always a dead give-away) Mark and I got out our smart phones and started giving him the address and directions, which for some reason he was reluctant to take. Apparently his navigation system said the address didn't exist. I'm not sure whether he had the city wrong, or whether his GPS system maps were outdated. He also had a smart phone. What was the problem? Smart phones in the hands of not-so-smart people = not that useful.

"Look, the blue dot is us and the red dot is where we're going. It's just about a half a block from where we are now."

 We did get there in the end, but it was a painful struggle. 

I thought about all the times in my life when I've had to rely on a cab driver to get me to a hotel, a restaurant, or an airport. When you're a tourist, you don't usually know where you're going. If this had happened back in the dark days before smart phones, we'd have gone hungry. 

And just so you know, we passed on the monetary tip. The only tip I have for these drivers is to get familiar with the area. There's more to Orlando than Disney and the airport.