Taxi!

What is it with Cab Drivers?

Now that sounds like the mid point in a bad observational stand-up set - Michael McIntyre perhaps!*

I'm back home and am just about settled in to the normal Sunday routine. Its Rugby practice so 30% and I took T&M for a good walk over the fields behind the Rugby club whilst TP went through two hours of  practice and drills.

After lunch I took on the long over due task of de-scaling the Gaggia. Coffee may be the national drink of Americe but from my research they have yet to learn how to make a decent cup of it. I have spent all week drinking either hot brown water or something that has been stewed for so long that any aroma has been replaced with a vile bitter burnt flavour. "Ah" you might say "what about Starbucks?" "What about them?" is my pithy reply. I'm not a fan and am yet to walk out of there with an Americano that has had a decent double esspresso as its foundation.

So here I am at home going through a de-scale cycle so that I can have a decent cup of coffee tomorrow morning. My coffee of choice is Whittard's Old Brown Java - freshly ground it makes the most superb cup of coffee. The thing about coffee is that it rarely tastes as good as it smells - well OBJ actually does.

I usually buy a load and freeze the beans. They can be ground from frozen so I can always have that fresh ground flavour. I'm no coffee expert but I can heartily recommend Whittards coffee blends if you want a decent cup. Other ones to try include Monsoon Malabar, Cafe Francais, After Dinner Blend and the Italian Espresso blends. I suppose I should point out that these are all at the higher end in terms of strength.

Now, Cab Drivers - I was advised not to hire a car in Boston so all week I have been partaking of the Services of various Boston Cab Companies.

Now I was away on Business and these trips were of sufficient length and frequency to be expensed items. So I dutifully requested a receipt at the end of each trip.......

..... Now here is the issue, why is is that Cab Drivers always want to leave me with a blank receipt plus a few spares "just in case"? Do I look like I am in to embezzlement in a big way? I find it most peculiar that they are of the mind set that I am the sort of person that will submit a crooked taxi receipt and put my job on the line so I can claim a couple of dollars more than I actually paid.

Have they really thought this through? My line manager approves my expenses and I am sure that there is not a different kind of cab with a different kind of cab driver for any journey he takes so when he gets out and asks for a receipt he is also offered a blank one or a few spares too.

So he is aware of this and is going to look bloody closely at any taxi receipts I submit.

The consequence of this is that I have had to spend all week twisting the arm of Cabbies to get them to scrawl a few words on one of the most dodgy and unconvincing documents on the planet.

Now this is the puzzling thing - a Cabbie has to think sequentially otherwise you would never get beyond the first junction on your route and certainly would never get to where you needed to be. So why is it that they haven't sussed that fiddling taxi receipts is not worth the money. They only have to consider the process to see the flaw in their misplaced generosity.

----------------------------------------------------------------

* If you were there, why were you still there at the mid-point?