Story: Fighting taxi drivers

[Kiprida]

Fighting Taxi Drivers

David came very excited and told me “You can’t believe!! They are fighting over me!”
What happened?- I asked surprisingly.
He went to my window and started to look around.
- Do you see that black cub?
- That one?
- Yes, yes!
- So?
- Two of taxi drivers are fighting over me!
- Why? - I asked.
- I don’t know!! Everyday I take the taxi to the hotel. Every time I take the first one in the line of cubs. I just realized that the black one was always staying the first to the Company’s entrance. I never … never paid attention that I was using the same taxi. Yesterday I sat to the fist car as usual and the fight began between two taxi drivers. Then I remembered that the one who was very anxious was the driver of the black cub.

David couldn’t understand that in Baku, taxi drivers are not working for the companies and not all the taxis are yellow. People, use their own cars and earn money for their families. They don’t have fixed salaries, their income depends on number of clients. Most of them are educated people, who have graduated universities. With disintegration of the USSR they have lost everything: their money collected over years in balloons - not in banks, their work places when all the farms closed as they were not profitable. And now they have responsibilities, and to afford the costs they need more clients.

An Englishman is the present for the taxi drivers, because they pay more. And imagine you have client who stays during a month with every arrival and you can count on him and wait for 6 PM. And what happens when another taxi driver steals him?! …

The next day David came even more excited! He was happy because he got a discount. During 3 days taxi drivers decreased the payment from 6 AZN (1 AZN= 0.8 USD) to 4 AZN, but number of fighting drivers increased…

Today David is back to Baku and will continue his training program to the risky guys at the Credit Risk Department. Today, at 6 PM he came to me and stood by window, started to look around and said “fighting taxi drivers” and left the office.
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