September 3, 2018
From naked babies to naked customers, from drunk passengers who yell obscenities to sweet clients who tip generously (and sometimes with fresh fish), St. John’s taxi drivers have seen it all.
This is especially true at night, when the city changes — and so too does the taxi trade.
Being a taxi driver is not for everyone.
The hours are long. The pay is lousy. I’ve been doing it for seven years, and it’s not easy.
But driving a cab has taught me about life — that everyone has a story to tell, and that every passenger is open to sharing a snippet of their lives in one way or another.
From the vantage of my driver’s seat, I’ve become an observer of people. I’ve seen the best of the city, as well as its underside.
The streets can be dangerous after dark. A passenger reminded me of this recently, with the snap of the Taser that he carried.
“Just a little show and tell,” my passenger said as he waved around the concealed weapon. “I would con the drawers off a nun, straight up.”
One kilometre at a time, from the view of my rear-view mirror, I meet all levels of society, and am introduced to a variety of social problems that many people never encounter first-hand.
Sweating, mumbling, desperate
Picking up unknown passengers who sit directly behind me can be a little nerve-wracking. Some customers can be unpredictable, especially when drugs are involved.
I regularly drive people who are looking for their next fix. When they ask me to take them to certain streets, I know what they’re really looking for.
Recently, I picked up a man and a woman who gave me the sense of just how frantic and dependent drug use can be. Sweating and mumbling, they entered my cab, and I could sense their desperation. Once they named their destination — and I guessed the house number — I could see the paranoia and anxiety set in.
We make a quick stop at the dilapidated drug house, parking just up the street to not raise awareness of neighbors. The man in the front seat anxiously counted out $240 to his accomplice..
“She will be back in a second, hopefully,” the man says. He tells me she is banned from the local drugstore, and that she “needs me to get the short tips,” referring to intravenous needles.
The conversation sends a cold wash of sweat down my back.
Work at night, study by night
But I’ve got bills to pay. For the last couple of years, driving a cab is the only way I could afford journalism school at College of the North Atlantic (CNA).
Some nights, fear has been my safeguard. It kept me from making drastic decisions while behind the wheel and carries me through each night shift.
It takes a special kind of person to deal with the public in the dead of night.
One driver you may meet in St. John’s is Angela Hanlon. She works the night shift part-time and has been behind the wheel for a year and a half.
“I get hit on just about every night I work,” Hanlon said. “Mostly by drunk men of all ages.”
Intoxicated male passengers are surprised when they open the door to a whiff of perfume and see a woman with pretty nails holding the steering wheel.
She’s used to the pickup lines. “How lucky am I to be driven by the world’s most beautiful taxi driver?” is a refrain she’s heard.
Hanlon said she gets a mixture of good and bad customers on the night shift. Great conversations are held, laughs are shared and a lot of the passengers are shocked a woman would even consider driving a taxi in the nighttime.
“My passengers say I’m brave,” said Hanlon, adding “I have also made a lot of good friends on the road.”
Hanlon admits things do get out of hand sometimes in her cab when people are under the influence of alcohol. One evening, while driving three women downtown, she stopped her cab on the bottom of Barter’s Hill next to a police car at a red light.
“The girl in my passenger seat lifted her shirt up and flashed the two officers, and the cops laughed hard,” Hanlon said.
There is, however, one night she will never forget, when she witnessed a kinky sexual encounter in her back seat.
“The husband asked me if he paid me double the meter fare, could he have sex with his wife in the back seat,” Hanlon chuckled.
“True story. Obviously, no was the answer.”
But there are times when Hanlon is nervous when dealing with extremely intoxicated passengers, who can become abusive. Hanlon knows that if she was ever in serious trouble, her co-workers are one mic click away and they would parade to her rescue.
“I know they would all have my back if I needed anything, and we have a really friendly staff,” said Hanlon, who drives for Newfound Cabs. “I really like it.”
A tough gig
I’ve gotten to know a number of drivers over the years. Working from all the stands, they speak of countless incidents of verbal and physical abuse, theft and even sexual allegations.
“This time of night is the scariest for me and my colleagues,” said one driver, Jim — his real name is withheld — as he parks his car on Duckworth Street, footsteps away from the bars of George Street.
It is 2 o’clock in the morning, and the strip is empty. Some customers are drunk and wandering aimlessly, looking for a ride home.
Jim says he chooses his parking place strategically. “If the person is able to walk up the stairs from George Street to my cab, it means they're not as wasted.”
He’s seen plenty, including a woman who got in the front seat complaining of having cold hands — and then proceeded to touch, and grope, him.
When he objected, the woman became irate, throwing a homophobic slur and even threatening to report a rape if he complained. Jim did not report the incident to his company because of fear of being ridiculed by co-workers. “I was afraid no one would believe me and make fun of me,” said Jim, who has since installed a dashcam running inside the cab at all times, for his own protection.
The offer of sexual favours is not rare. Another driver told me a customer showed her breasts. “She assumed I would take it for payment,” the driver said. (According to the driver, the passenger made an allegation of sexual assault to the company — one that was withdrawn after the driver revealed he had audio of the incident, thanks to his dashcam.)
Relations with the police generally seem good. Cabbies say the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary is very responsive when called to a theft or assault.
Many cab drivers also say they regularly report impaired drivers, and will follow the intoxicated driver to their destination until police arrive.
“I have seen people come out of a club and crawl or fall into their car,” a driver said.
When dealing with irate passengers, some cabbies will lock the doors and deliver them to St. John’s finest on Parade Street. But others sometimes just take the abuse and the economic loss when dealing with what they call “jumpers.”
“We can’t say or do anything about it,” a female driver said. “We would be considered unprofessional.”
Living on the edge
You don’t drive a cab to get rich. Many cabbies live below the poverty line and go to work with less than a $10 float in their pockets.
Therefore, losing a $30 fare could ruin a shift. Some of them claim they make between $60 to $80 on a 12-hour shift, after they pay for gas. This is less than minimum wage.
“I make four dollars an hour some nights, if someone skips a fare.” Jim said. “I put up with some bullshit.”
Some passengers push their luck. They demanding flat rates. They ask for the meter to be turned off. They try to pass over less than the fare.
Food often gets wasted. If someone throws up, the night for a driver is effectively over, Jim says.
The stories the taxi drivers gave are endless. From customers using the bathroom in their cars, to changing babies, to running off on fares, the nighttime shift in the cab industry never fails to surprise some drivers.
The verbal abuse can add up, too.
“I am treated like a worthless piece of shit by some customers every night,” Jim said. “I have a university degree but I am unable to find employment in my field of study.”
Jim adds, however that not all fares he picks up are disrespectful. He says he has been given many spots of tea, bags of apples, fresh fish and the occasional $50 tip.
“Mug-ups with old women are the best,” Jim said. “I’ll continue to offer service with a smile and hold the door.”
For the full-time Eastern Health housekeeper Angela Hanlon, she will continue to drive a taxi part time — because she has to.
For me, my nights of holding the door of a taxi are ending as I have graduated from the journalism program at CNA. I am going to go where my camera, paper, and pen take me, telling the stories of the voiceless, never judging and always remembering the valuable life lessons that taxi driving has taught me.
Text by Arthur Craig Green. Photography by Paul Daly.