Average Joe In The House. sKy

I must first explain that I'm not typing this to pick on anybody.

Why do I always see complaints about our bus and taxi drivers on the New Paper? I shall quote some, to the best of what I can remember.

1) This happened to my friend
Friend: Er uncle, can go to XXXXX Camp?
Taxi Driver: Do I have a choice?

Does he need to be so rude? If you do not want to drive us there, then say no. There's loads of taxis queueing behind you.

2) From The New Paper
There's this passenger who came back to the bus and didn't have enough change to pay for the fare. The bus driver then decided that he will not drive off until he get the passenger to pay. Note that it is during the peak hour, where everyone is rushing to work.

After a very long time talking to the passenger, many of the passengers got frustrated and requested to get off the bus. The driver promptly allowed them to do so, without showing any sign of guilt that he caused them to be late for work. When other passengers volunteered to help pay for that poor passenger, the bus driver didn't allow them to do so, and said that the passenger must pay herself.

I do not know what happened to that poor passenger in the end, but most of the passengers left the bus.

Can't the bus driver be more considerate? Why must he make things difficult for everyone, and cause so many people to be late, just because of one lady who can't pay enough?

3) This happened to me
I was calling for a cab, and I won't say which taxi company. Upon giving us the taxi license plate number and telling us that it will arrive in 10 minutes, we then walked out of our camp and waited for the taxi, together with our warrant officer, whose cab will arrive in 20 minutes time. We called the same company.

Within 15 minutes, his taxi arrived, and it's a Mercedes cab. Lucky guy.

As our camp is really deserted, we decided to give our taxi driver the benefit of doubt that he got lost, and that's why he was late. But after 40 minutes, we decided to call the taxi company again and see what's wrong. The only reply I got from there was that they couldn't check for me, because their server hanged, and that they will call me very soon. They soon hang up before I could say anything.

They only called 30 minutes later. By then, I got onto another cab, and I didn't answer their phone.

How irresponsible can they be? Why bother to take down the passenger's contact number if you're not going to call them and tell them that something has cropped up, or that you will be late because of a jam or something?

From then on, I never liked that taxi company, and I seem to be "blacklisted" because my friends use my phone to call them and they will never ever pick my phone up. Shouldn't it be me blacklisting them instead of the other way round?

I seriously feel that people like them, who work in the public sector, need to be trained on their manners and working attitude. Imagine the impression a tourist will get if the taxi driver is so rude like the one in the first incident.

Taxi and bus drivers should undergo a course that teaches them how to handle difficult situations in the right manner, to least affect the rest of the passengers. They shouldn't become one just because they know the roads well, or that they can drive well.

One good bus driver is one that drives Bus 302. He greets everyone who comes up the bus, and most of the passengers will either return a smile or say hi. It might be a simple gesture, but it sure makes the bus ride pleasant. Sure it looks weird in the beginning, and you might think that he's a psycho. But in the long run, you will find that it is the right working attitude.

Let's start by learning this simple gesture shall we?