My worst job ever: and most taxing, too

Here’s something you definitely do not want in a job:

      An understanding that the faster you drive the more money you make.

      But at the beginning of my junior year in college—a semester I spent away from Haverford College and in New York City, going to NYU—I got a job in which such a calculation clearly applied.

      I became a “hack,” a cab driver.

      It wasn’t a hard job to get: You got your driver’s license upgraded to a “Chauffeur’s License,” applied to the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission, took a test on the addresses of various places taxi customers might have been inclined to go (such as Yankee Stadium: then 161st Street and River Avenue) and sat in on a safety class (in which I learned to stay away—on two-way avenues with a median strip, such as Park Avenue or upper Broadway—from the left lane, which the instructor labeled, the “suicide lane”).

      And there I was: an English major sidling up to the dispatcher in a room on West 126th Street very much like the one that would later be portrayed in the TV show, “Taxi.”

      You didn’t have to be a math major to realize that, if you got more fares, your 49-percent cut of the fare would— after paying for food and the rent— allow you to buy more records. And the faster you drove the more fares you would have time for.

      So, I drove fast: so fast that, as I zig-zagged in and out of traffic, I recall passengers with their foreheads pressed against the side window and scared looks upon their faces.

      I drove mostly the night shift, ‘cause there was less traffic, though sometimes after driving the night shift, I got another taxi and drove the day shift.

    I was making maybe $25 dollars per shift in 1969; the equivalent of about $215 today.

    I had two mottos as a taxi driver:

1.     Always look both ways before going through a red light

2.     If they honk, that means they see you.

       A taxi-driving acquaintance at that time conceptualized this approach to city driving somewhat differently. “If I put my cab in a certain place,” he explained, “nobody else can be there at the same time." “Offensive driving,” he called it.

      However, there were a couple of loud and jarring moments when my taxi and another car did find themselves occupying a portion of the same space.

       It got stressful.

       It didn’t help that these were the days when the need for heroin was putting considerable financial pressure on certain members of society. There weren’t yet partitions in taxis, and taxis in those days were full of cash. So, one lived with the fear of a knife suddenly pressing against your neck.

      Yeah, it was interesting driving here and there in the big city. Yeah, I often enjoyed interacting with passengers. Yeah, I could afford lots of groovy records. But I finished many a shift—at about five in the morning—frazzled.

      I had quite a few jobs that did not require a degree before I got my degrees, as did many members of our generation (though not that many members of my children’s generation).

      Taxi driving was the most taxing.

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      [Let us know what’s the worst job you have ever had. Something you suffered through while young? Or an adult drudgery? Or something good that turned bad? Write to us at writingaboutourgeneration@gmail.com.]