jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
For about the last eight weeks I've taken a hiatus from this place, and thought it might be of general interest to relate what I doing during some of that time. As I mentioned shortly before I left I was asked to help my friend run his taximeter shop during the taxi rate change. I told him yes more as a favor than for the money (he could only afford $10/hour, which incidentally was more than he pays all but one of his regular employees). Anyway, it was a decision that came to cause me both regret and amusement.
The new rate was scheduled to take effect on May 3, and all of the meters were capable of being preprogrammed with the new rate so that they could be rate-changed in advance. I started on April 6 in order to prepare things for the upcoming flood of business. This was easier said than done. For starters, although I was familiar with the shop (I had worked there from 1988 to 1990) and with taximeters in general, I knew nothing at all about the specific meters I would be working with. Second, this place gives new meaning to the words disorganized and jury-rigged. For years my friend barely made enough to pay the bills and his employees thanks to his competition using mostly illegal aliens at $1 an hour and undercutting him. As a result, all the equipment is old, and the place is a mess. Thanks to the low pay and generally not so great working conditions his employee turnover is fairly frequent. As a result, there is all sorts of test equipment and computers wired in ways that require someone with a degree in engineering just to figure out what's going on. That's where I came in. For starters, we had to move a sign-making machine to another room, and set up a computer for the rate change in its place. This resulted in ongoing problems with both the hardware and software running the machine despite my making careful diagrams of how everything was connected. About ten other things were connected to the sign-making machine PC, and I had no idea what they were used for, or if he even needed them. This seemed to be the rule rather than the exception.
I worked five days in the first two weeks and was actually pretty proud of the job I did getting everything in order. I even had him replace the yellowed plastic covers on the fluorescent tubes that were causing my eyeballs great consternation. It hadn't been easy. For starters, I had a great deal of trouble getting used to day hours. In fact, my body never really made the adjustment even when I worked there for two years, and as a result I was tired all the time. And then all sorts of stupid problems came up. When I needed to go on the Internet there to get a meter program it turned into a three-hour project tracing ad-hoc phone lines in the building. The likely culprit was probably a stuck relay in one of the phones which caused the line to go dead. When you're using old equipment things like that happen. And to add to it all I picked up strepped throat from one of the employees. Since everyone had either had it or was getting it I saw no point staying home, so working with a 100°F fever added to the fat headaches I was coming home with each night. I suddenly remembered why (besides the pay and the lousy hours) I had never taken my friend up on offers to work there full-time. I could tolerate a few weeks of this, but that was it.
By week three we started to get busy, and between April 19 and May 4 I had one lousy day off. I remember it well, too. I decided to take a bike ride that night to release some of my pent-up aggravation. In the end I'm not sure if it was a good idea. I warmed up a bit, and then went plain crazy driving around like a late locomotive engineer trying to make up time. Given the condition of the streets after the long, icy winter this was not a good idea. I pulled away from a stoplight, "redlining" through the gears, and hit about 25 mph about a block later. Just then, when I was going from 3 to 4, I saw it. A huge pothole, and I was almost on top of it. No time to do anything but jerk the handlebars. I felt the back wheel breaking loose when I did that so I counter-steered without thinking. In fact, I didn't think about anything, I just reacted. It was a recovery that would have made Lance Armstrong proud. And right after that, another pothole. This one was smaller and I rode through it with just a little bone jarring. After that, I finished going through the gears on a nice gentle down-slope, and got up to a bit over 40 mph. And wouldn't you know it, the traffic light decides to turn red just when I'm approaching a busy intersection. I figured it was long past time for a brake test anyway, and managed to stop just short of the intersection. About that time I decided I'd best head home. Twelve miles of this was enough adventure for one day. Lesson of the day-don't ride a bike when you're aggravated, especially when you're strong enough to quickly reach dangerous speeds as I can.
After that fateful Sunday, I figured the next two weeks would be the calm leading up to the storm. It turned out to be just the opposite. We were fairly busy for most of the two weeks prior to May 3, and I put in a good 25+ O/T both weeks. We were expecting (and somewhat prepared for) a mad rush of last minute customers in the few days before the rate change took effect. In fact, I had figured on working about 48 hours straight on the weekend before the rate change took effect. It never happened. We were undercut (again) by most of the other meter shops, and thanks to some teething problems during the first week we were taking a ridiculously long time to get people out the door. In the end this was a good thing for me, but not for my friend. I was spent by early May thanks to a combination of being sick half the time and not being used to day hours. I'm not sure if I would have lasted had we been busy. May 4 was thankfully my last day, although I'll continue to work at home part-time for my friend as I have the last fourteen years. And I'll probably be less likely to work at the shop in the future unless the pay is really good. It's no reflection on my friend, who is a great person to work for. It's just the nature of the business.
Sadly, this line of business, like many others, has gone downhill. The customers are no longer willing to pay for quality. They'll buy garbage if it's $1 cheaper. And I have trouble understanding what half the customers are saying. Apparently the requirement that you speak proper English to drive a NYC taxi isn't enforced by the TLC, or maybe they have a different idea of what speaking English is. All I know is that after a month of dealing with these people I never want to set foot in a taxi again. Oh well, at least I get bragging rights and can say I survived the great rate change of 2004. And I'm going to eBay the used trade-in taximeters we got from the customers. That might turn out to be the silver lining on the dark cloud that this whole fiasco turned out to be.
The new rate was scheduled to take effect on May 3, and all of the meters were capable of being preprogrammed with the new rate so that they could be rate-changed in advance. I started on April 6 in order to prepare things for the upcoming flood of business. This was easier said than done. For starters, although I was familiar with the shop (I had worked there from 1988 to 1990) and with taximeters in general, I knew nothing at all about the specific meters I would be working with. Second, this place gives new meaning to the words disorganized and jury-rigged. For years my friend barely made enough to pay the bills and his employees thanks to his competition using mostly illegal aliens at $1 an hour and undercutting him. As a result, all the equipment is old, and the place is a mess. Thanks to the low pay and generally not so great working conditions his employee turnover is fairly frequent. As a result, there is all sorts of test equipment and computers wired in ways that require someone with a degree in engineering just to figure out what's going on. That's where I came in. For starters, we had to move a sign-making machine to another room, and set up a computer for the rate change in its place. This resulted in ongoing problems with both the hardware and software running the machine despite my making careful diagrams of how everything was connected. About ten other things were connected to the sign-making machine PC, and I had no idea what they were used for, or if he even needed them. This seemed to be the rule rather than the exception.
I worked five days in the first two weeks and was actually pretty proud of the job I did getting everything in order. I even had him replace the yellowed plastic covers on the fluorescent tubes that were causing my eyeballs great consternation. It hadn't been easy. For starters, I had a great deal of trouble getting used to day hours. In fact, my body never really made the adjustment even when I worked there for two years, and as a result I was tired all the time. And then all sorts of stupid problems came up. When I needed to go on the Internet there to get a meter program it turned into a three-hour project tracing ad-hoc phone lines in the building. The likely culprit was probably a stuck relay in one of the phones which caused the line to go dead. When you're using old equipment things like that happen. And to add to it all I picked up strepped throat from one of the employees. Since everyone had either had it or was getting it I saw no point staying home, so working with a 100°F fever added to the fat headaches I was coming home with each night. I suddenly remembered why (besides the pay and the lousy hours) I had never taken my friend up on offers to work there full-time. I could tolerate a few weeks of this, but that was it.
By week three we started to get busy, and between April 19 and May 4 I had one lousy day off. I remember it well, too. I decided to take a bike ride that night to release some of my pent-up aggravation. In the end I'm not sure if it was a good idea. I warmed up a bit, and then went plain crazy driving around like a late locomotive engineer trying to make up time. Given the condition of the streets after the long, icy winter this was not a good idea. I pulled away from a stoplight, "redlining" through the gears, and hit about 25 mph about a block later. Just then, when I was going from 3 to 4, I saw it. A huge pothole, and I was almost on top of it. No time to do anything but jerk the handlebars. I felt the back wheel breaking loose when I did that so I counter-steered without thinking. In fact, I didn't think about anything, I just reacted. It was a recovery that would have made Lance Armstrong proud. And right after that, another pothole. This one was smaller and I rode through it with just a little bone jarring. After that, I finished going through the gears on a nice gentle down-slope, and got up to a bit over 40 mph. And wouldn't you know it, the traffic light decides to turn red just when I'm approaching a busy intersection. I figured it was long past time for a brake test anyway, and managed to stop just short of the intersection. About that time I decided I'd best head home. Twelve miles of this was enough adventure for one day. Lesson of the day-don't ride a bike when you're aggravated, especially when you're strong enough to quickly reach dangerous speeds as I can.
After that fateful Sunday, I figured the next two weeks would be the calm leading up to the storm. It turned out to be just the opposite. We were fairly busy for most of the two weeks prior to May 3, and I put in a good 25+ O/T both weeks. We were expecting (and somewhat prepared for) a mad rush of last minute customers in the few days before the rate change took effect. In fact, I had figured on working about 48 hours straight on the weekend before the rate change took effect. It never happened. We were undercut (again) by most of the other meter shops, and thanks to some teething problems during the first week we were taking a ridiculously long time to get people out the door. In the end this was a good thing for me, but not for my friend. I was spent by early May thanks to a combination of being sick half the time and not being used to day hours. I'm not sure if I would have lasted had we been busy. May 4 was thankfully my last day, although I'll continue to work at home part-time for my friend as I have the last fourteen years. And I'll probably be less likely to work at the shop in the future unless the pay is really good. It's no reflection on my friend, who is a great person to work for. It's just the nature of the business.
Sadly, this line of business, like many others, has gone downhill. The customers are no longer willing to pay for quality. They'll buy garbage if it's $1 cheaper. And I have trouble understanding what half the customers are saying. Apparently the requirement that you speak proper English to drive a NYC taxi isn't enforced by the TLC, or maybe they have a different idea of what speaking English is. All I know is that after a month of dealing with these people I never want to set foot in a taxi again. Oh well, at least I get bragging rights and can say I survived the great rate change of 2004. And I'm going to eBay the used trade-in taximeters we got from the customers. That might turn out to be the silver lining on the dark cloud that this whole fiasco turned out to be.
