A lady walks up and asks for a ride.
"What's your name mam, or the name of the caller, i'm here for a phone-dispatched pickup"
"Tamara"
"i'm sorry, i'm looking for someone else"
"You here for bob?" A white guy asks me.
"Yes Bob, I'm Tokahara I'll be your driver" I tell him as I open the door for him and his wife.
An hour later I here from the dispatch manager that I " refused a customer because she was black"
As both an official of what was then the premier radio cab company in the Capital of Your Nation, as well as a driver for the same, I do not know how many times I have had to deal with complaints like that. Back then, we had real dispatch. The operators wrote the calls on slips of paper. What we had to do was send a copy of the call slip as well as a cover letter with the driver to the Hack Office. That would get him out of trouble. Race almost always was involved.
It happened to me, personally, once or twice. I always had the call on the trip sheet, as well. The law does require you to note on your trip sheet what time you went ON CALL and the address to which you were proceeding. The trip sheet, alone, usually did not exonerate you, as, for the most part, the adjudicators believed your trip sheet only when they could use it against you.
I did have a case, once, though, where it involved a previous arrangement rather than a dispatched call. Fortunately, this was a regular customer of mine, so she provided a letter for me. As I suspected that this, alone, would not be enough, I gathered old trip sheets where I had picked up this customer. She always paid with a credit card. My copy of the credit car receiptwas always stapled to the trip sheet for the day. In fact, I make income and expense notations on my trip sheets every day, list running totals and have receipts and copies stapled to each one. The handwriting is barely legible on the trips*. All of the above makes the trip sheets look real and demonstrates that I pay my taxes. The Hack Office let me go.
We had another case at American University, oddly enough, at Christmas time getaway. It appears that this young lady (and I use the term loosely), was trying to get a ride to one of the less popular destination neighbourhoods. Of course, the drivers who were ON CALL refused her, as they were supposed to pick up the passenger assigned by the dispatcher. She was, of course, one of these "militant", "assertive", "aware", "conscious", "advocay" types, so she wrote down every cab number and time of refusal, called the Chairman of the Taxicab Commission and made her complaint.
The Chairman called me, demanded to know what was going on; demanded to know why my drivers would not take her and finally demanded that I produce these drivers in his office in less than an hour. I told him that less than an hour was not happening, but that I would have them there either late that afternoon, if they had not gone home, or the next day. He threatened, pissed and moaned, but he agreed. I actually made it happen that afternoon. In addition, I got the call slips for every driver involved for the hour before and after the alleged occurrences.
The Chair gave all of us a lecture. When it was my turn to speak, I let him have it and told him that I was tired of some people hollering "
DISCRIMINATION!!!!!" when anything happened that did not quite sit right with them. I added that what made me even more unhappy was that people actually listened to them, when it was obvious that something else could have been the case. That Chair knew damned well that my company was mostly a dispatch company, that we got a large volume of business from American University and that it was get away time there. I then handed him all of the call slips for all of the drivers and told him that if he looked at them he would see that every driver was ON CALL. We got into a shouting match over it. In fact, he started hurling insults at me about New Yorkers (I am really from Massachusetts, originally, but my mother's side of the family is from New York and I did live there as a child and a young man) and how we had big mouths and no respect. Of course, I had to return the favour about people from New Jersey (he was from Newark and was the head Cab Regulator, there). Finally, we calmed down, and I told him to say what he would, and, if he wanted to push it, he already knew the name and telephone number of the Company Lawyer. He let the drivers go, but he did have to add another lecture. In reality, the Chair and I had a good working relationship, but we did go at each other from time to time, even on record.
* I have been to more than one hearing where the adjudicators informed a driver that they would not accept his trip sheet because it looked manufactured "on a kitchen table, last night", They cited that it was neat, everything lined up and it was too easy to read. They mentioned that in a real situation, it would be held in an awkward position and the information would have been hastily scribbled. My trip sheets are barely legible, except for the income/expense portions on it that I add at the end of every work day. Some people in the Hack Office have commented on that, but I told them that while my handwriting is more like hieroglyphics, even under the best of conditions (I averaged D s in penmanship--If I actually got a C in penmanship in any quarter, my parents considered it cause for celebration), I do add the expense income while I am sitting at the kitchen table at the end of every day. We still use handwritten trip sheets up here. They are due to go out, soon, though. At that point, I will keep a notebook with dates, trip times, fare charged, tips, opening and closing mileage. This will be simply for the benefit of the Internal Revenue, should it ask questions. As The District of Columbia loves to overregulate those who can or will not pay to keep away the regulation, the Regulators have gone as far as to prohibit the use of paper trip sheets when the new rule takes effect. Let them try to issue me a summons for that. They have no control over how I keep my records, as long as I keep them accurately.
