A good shift

One expects work on a Sunday to be relaxed and easy in keeping with the day of rest. Even with a big football event like yesterdays. The Swans played St. Kilda in an important Aussie Rules clash at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

I arrived at games end around 4.30 pm just as the Moore Park area went into gridlock. People and traffic everywhere. Crawling south in heavy traffic along Anzac Parade toward Fox Studios and the football rank, I was hailed by a middle-aged couple, with the bulky male threatening to step in front of the cab. Blatant intimidation with the cab. Dumber and dumber...

However given the opportunity of escaping the area, I stopped. They’re going south to Randwick or Coogee I reasoned, allowing me to continue on to the Airport. Generally I work the busy Airport on my relaxed Sunday routine of reading and writing whilst waiting in the holding yard.

They scamper in whilst I hold up traffic. ‘Central Station champion !’, barks the bloke, drunk and pleased with himself. Obviously they had by-passed the thousands waiting at the Fox cab rank, with the bloke insisting they would pinch an approaching cab on busy Anzac Parade. Or maybe she had initiated this hair-brain proposal, so as to avoid the myriad of bars at Fox. I sensed this by her soberness.

I tacked onto the tail of the traffic jam, knowing we were trouble. There was no way out save crawling into Fox and out again, in order to get to Central Station. What was normally a $10, ten minute fare was now a $30 job and at least a half-hour. I told them so. ‘Bullshit mate, just turn right at Cleveland Street !’, he ordered. ‘Mate, there’s no right turn !’, I responded. ‘Nah, you’ll be right’, he orders, in no mood to be rebuffed by a lousy cabbie shit.

Turning around I look directly at them and state emphatically, ‘There is no way in the world I’m going to pull a right turn on Cleveland and risk my livehood, so don’t even ask me ! You’re on the wrong side of the road. We gotta go back into Fox.’ Which by now is total gridlock with 40,000 fans exiting the area. Fuck him.

Realising this idiot plan has been torpedoed, he hits the roof. ‘You’re a fuckin’ moron cabbie...’ at which point his missus springs to the fray to neutralise inevitable trouble. She can sense I’m no pushover and have no intention of being intimidated, by her drunken husband.

But he continues, despite her protestations, rounding on me, ‘He’s a fuckin’ asshole cabbie’, he barks at her as she pleads with him to settle down. And so on with more profanities. Finally I’ve had enough Sunday abuse and rip the handbrake on. Without looking back I state, ‘Maybe you’ll be more comfortable in another cab !’. The message is clear, fuck off ! Immediately she takes the offer telling him to get out and reaches for her money. Initially, he can’t accept defeat and the resultant lose of face. He won’t budge. ‘No charge’, I call back to them.

This infuriates him even more as she yells at him to, ‘Get out !, get out !’. Still gridlocked in three lanes of traffic, I ignore them and turn the radio back on, knowing she has her little boy by the short and curlys. He knows it too and flings the door open with more abuse, ‘ Ya fuckin’, cocksucking cabbie c___ !’ He lets her out to storm off down the footpath, disgusted.

For her, a good day at the footie is by now totally trashed. But he’s not finished with a scumbag cabbie who has made him look like the drunken idiot he obviously is. Leaning back in the cab, he quietly says something unspeakable about my Mother !!

Not much phases me as I thought I’d heard it all before. But this last disgusting comment sends me over the edge, as he smugly sauntered off after his upset wife. Flinging open my door I jump out and call that he must have been practising the same thing with his daughter !

By his immediate reaction I knew he either has a daughter, or has been trying for one. He spins on his heel, with crimson face and balled fists, storms back to me yelling, ‘I’m going to sort you out you fucking c___ !’. Hearing this, his missus turns and starts screaming at him.

Standing next to the cab, surrounded by gridlocked traffic, I hold my ground and open my arms wide to the traffic, ‘What are ya gunna do - assault me in front of a hundred witnesses !?!’ Reaching me he lunges with two straightened arms to thump his hands flat into my chest.

A classic bouncer move. But he’s too pissed, emotional and off-balance for the shove to have any real force, which I absorb easily. Then he’s gone. Phew. Relieved, I call it a draw and get back in the cab.

It’s 4.45 pm on a sunny Sunday afternoon and that was my first pick-up. Later, I have pain in the chest and so ring a nurse friend inquiring whether my heart could be bruised, from such an action. She gives me the all-clear and says it’s probably just a little rib bruising.

Later from Fox Studios, there was more drunken passenger worries with the Swans fans, as they celebrated an unexpected win, into the night. Relatively speaking, not worth mentioning. In the end, I made good money allowing me to knock off early, at 2 am this morning. A good shift.

Comments

[Crusader]

The stories of your workday are excellent reading. Thanks for all the entertainment, even when it is about wankers like that bloke.

[CalG]

what a big head w*nker