What a lovely article. There's a strong correlation between the energy you put out into the world and what you get back.
I often think that as I end up confirming a grumpy/aggressive person's expectation I'll be a bad customer, or confirming a kind/present persons's expectation I'll be a good one
They're popular in London too. The scam seems to be that if tourists don't arrange the price beforehand, it'll be arbitrarily inflated - they don't run a meter like a licensed taxi.
(London perspective), I've intervened from tourists getting scammed before from these guys, and they get violent very quickly. Especially fun because they have their gang all around.
Unlicensed, unmaintained, motorized vehicles on pedestrian paths, a miracle no one has been killed yet.
It's kind of insane, and is a microcosm of the UK's inability to do anything.
- Everyone hates them, from residents, to businesses, to the tourists that get harassed by them.
- There are multiple laws, that if the police wanted to, they could enforce at any time.
- Nothing gets done.
It is an impressive level of apathy from an already toothless government.
It's not that easy. He had those little chains strung across the side exits and wouldn't remove them until I paid. I told him they don't let you out of Canada with that kind of cash but he didn't believe me and laid siege to my day while eating a slice of pizza like a taco. The worst thing was that this was my second mishap with non-combustion locomotion that day. ...I still swear that was not the real Secretariat and that Central Park isn't in New Jersey.
Hm. Ok, well, I guess we would have handled that differently.
I had something similar happen in Germany, on the way from the (international) airport to a hotel the driver started some kind of spiel that suddenly his banking machine had broken and he couldn't take card payments. My friend/colleague Jaap who was with me said we'd pay cash and I said no way, and after fiddling for a bit with his phone (mine wasn't a smartphone) gave the driver a different address. When we ended up in front of the police station the driver became a lot more friendly, drove us to the hotel instead and suddenly found that his banking machine had miraculously started working again...
I find that by giving in to such fraud I'm helping to perpetrate it so I've vowed not to let it happen, at the same time there is always a chance that such an interaction would turn violent. After all, they've already decided they want to steal from you. My weighing of this is that they have more to lose than me because I'm a transient and they are not.
If they don't let you out of a vehicle, that's kidnapping and / or extortion and a call to the police should resolve it quickly. In a functioning society, anyway.
I saw this not because I think certain types of jobs should be done by certain types of people, but because that's what I see happening. So even before reading I knew this guy was going to be unusual in all sorts of ways.
Haven't visited Oslo, but I thought Norway was largely a white-skinned population. Why would it be jarring to see a white person doing any kind of job, or are you referring to some kind of job division racism?
It's the classic racism/classism combo... a lot of taxi drivers are foreigners for example because it can be a stressful and low-paying job at the end of the day.
Yes, oddly compared to taxis my experience in the US with pedicabs is that they're almost all white men driving. More of a freewheeling low responsibility type of job rather than providing for a family type situation. I wonder what sort of social shift resulted in this?
If it's anything like the sport of bicycling in the USA, for a long time it's been a sport of caucasians, this is changing a bit but it trickles all the way up just from a sampling of who represents the USA at the Olympics and World Championships. Possibly a combination of the high cost of entry with the clique-ishness and the sport requiring quite a bit of free time and the support or money to have that much free time. Not talking about kids riding around the neighborhood but people who continue or start riding as adults, so not a social shift at all but existing demographics.
What a lovely article. There's a strong correlation between the energy you put out into the world and what you get back.
I often think that as I end up confirming a grumpy/aggressive person's expectation I'll be a bad customer, or confirming a kind/present persons's expectation I'll be a good one
I must be unenlightened because this job would make me quite misanthropic. Even sitting in a doctors waiting room gives me that feeling.
It seems to me that a significant point of the article is that this is a choice you're continuously making, not an immutable fact about you.
What a great site design. Easy to read, simple layout almost comforting.
Sheldon Brown's website is to bicycles, as Arch Linux Wiki is to linux.
That's quite the story. I have a family member that spent some time on a taxi and the stories are much the same. Assholes aplenty.
Quite different than the scam pedicabs that operate in US cities now.
They're popular in London too. The scam seems to be that if tourists don't arrange the price beforehand, it'll be arbitrarily inflated - they don't run a meter like a licensed taxi.
What’s the scam?
They’ll end up charging you like $120 for a 10 min trip by just being deceptive and evasive about the fee structure.
(London perspective), I've intervened from tourists getting scammed before from these guys, and they get violent very quickly. Especially fun because they have their gang all around.
Unlicensed, unmaintained, motorized vehicles on pedestrian paths, a miracle no one has been killed yet.
It's kind of insane, and is a microcosm of the UK's inability to do anything.
- Everyone hates them, from residents, to businesses, to the tourists that get harassed by them.
- There are multiple laws, that if the police wanted to, they could enforce at any time.
- Nothing gets done.
It is an impressive level of apathy from an already toothless government.
Then you give them the finger and walk away.
It's not that easy. He had those little chains strung across the side exits and wouldn't remove them until I paid. I told him they don't let you out of Canada with that kind of cash but he didn't believe me and laid siege to my day while eating a slice of pizza like a taco. The worst thing was that this was my second mishap with non-combustion locomotion that day. ...I still swear that was not the real Secretariat and that Central Park isn't in New Jersey.
Hm. Ok, well, I guess we would have handled that differently.
I had something similar happen in Germany, on the way from the (international) airport to a hotel the driver started some kind of spiel that suddenly his banking machine had broken and he couldn't take card payments. My friend/colleague Jaap who was with me said we'd pay cash and I said no way, and after fiddling for a bit with his phone (mine wasn't a smartphone) gave the driver a different address. When we ended up in front of the police station the driver became a lot more friendly, drove us to the hotel instead and suddenly found that his banking machine had miraculously started working again...
I find that by giving in to such fraud I'm helping to perpetrate it so I've vowed not to let it happen, at the same time there is always a chance that such an interaction would turn violent. After all, they've already decided they want to steal from you. My weighing of this is that they have more to lose than me because I'm a transient and they are not.
If they don't let you out of a vehicle, that's kidnapping and / or extortion and a call to the police should resolve it quickly. In a functioning society, anyway.
Jarring to see a white person doing this job.
I saw this not because I think certain types of jobs should be done by certain types of people, but because that's what I see happening. So even before reading I knew this guy was going to be unusual in all sorts of ways.
Nice read, thanks for sharing.
Haven't visited Oslo, but I thought Norway was largely a white-skinned population. Why would it be jarring to see a white person doing any kind of job, or are you referring to some kind of job division racism?
It's the classic racism/classism combo... a lot of taxi drivers are foreigners for example because it can be a stressful and low-paying job at the end of the day.
In a lot of US tourist cities, I would say that’s who is predominantly doing it
Yes, oddly compared to taxis my experience in the US with pedicabs is that they're almost all white men driving. More of a freewheeling low responsibility type of job rather than providing for a family type situation. I wonder what sort of social shift resulted in this?
If it's anything like the sport of bicycling in the USA, for a long time it's been a sport of caucasians, this is changing a bit but it trickles all the way up just from a sampling of who represents the USA at the Olympics and World Championships. Possibly a combination of the high cost of entry with the clique-ishness and the sport requiring quite a bit of free time and the support or money to have that much free time. Not talking about kids riding around the neighborhood but people who continue or start riding as adults, so not a social shift at all but existing demographics.