Work Stories: Episode 71: Say Cheese

Previously on Work Stories, I wrote about driving in a van and one of the guys in the van deciding to moon a pedestrian as we drove by.  It was kind of a lame Work Story.  I know.  But it was there and I felt like sharing it.  That’s the whole point of these posts.  To share stories about my working life.

This week I have another Work Story for you that I hope will be a decent story but likely won’t.  That’s how these usually go.  I hope for the best, I prepare for the worst.  What is this week’s story going to be?  Well, if I told you now, it would ruin any small sense of suspense that I attempt to build by writing.  I would not want to do that.  It would make the post about three paragraphs long and a total of 200 words.  That wouldn’t be worth the time for either of us.

This one happened last week so it’s pretty fresh.  If I had remembered what day it was last week, I probably would have written it last week.  But I didn’t realize it was Friday until Saturday and then I got bogged down in a few other things and didn’t even get around to a Work Story.  I’ll eventually get even with all the Work Stories I’ve missed since I started writing them.  I’m not sure when that will be, but it will happen.  Back to this week’s story.  It’s something I saw happen while at work.  Of course it was.  It’s a Work Story.

I need to fill you in on one thing before I actually tell you the story.  The story itself isn’t that long, so I need to fill space somehow.  And this detail is relevant to what I witnessed.  So, yeah.  One thing that you can see a lot of in the tourism district of Niagara Falls is taxis.  Taxis are everywhere.  Sure, there might not be as many as in New York City or Toronto or any of the bigger cities.  They are bigger cities.  But there are still a lot of taxis driving around.  Every fifth car is probably a taxi, and many times they are just the same taxis doing their routes to try and pick up some fares.

I get annoyed by the taxis sometimes.  The drivers act like they don’t have to obey the laws.  They don’t use turn signals.  They speed.  They stop in the middle of the road.  They park illegally.  They block entrances to parking lots.  There are a lot of things that the taxi drivers do that annoy both pedestrians and other drivers.  This Work Story is one of the stranger things I have seen a taxi driver do.

Sitting behind the cash register at work like I normally do, I witnessed a taxi driver pull up in the right lane of the road and stop.  He didn’t get off the road or anything.  He just stopped in the right lane and honked his horn.  Three people came out of the store next door to the museum I work at and got into the car.  The taxi driver did not drive away.  Instead, he opened his door and stepped out of the car.  He walked to the middle of the street and pulled out his cellphone.  Then he took a selfie.

Never before in my life had I seen a taxi driver let his fare wait in his car while he took a selfie in the middle of the street.  This guy did.  Then he went back to the car, got in and drove away.  Like many other things I’ve seen at work, this left me speechless.  I thought drivers wanted to get their passengers to their destination as quickly as possible so that they could pick up more passengers.  It seems strange that the driver would waste time taking that picture.

So that’s the story because if I keep writing about it, I’ll just be writing in circles.  Yes, I still have a lot of possible Work Stories to write.  No, I haven’t been taking breaks because I ran out of stories.  I’ve just been not realizing it was Friday until it was too late.  I’ll do some extra Work Stories at some point.  Don’t worry.  Hopefully I’ll have the normal one out next week.  It would be nice to have a good, continuous flow of them for a bit. 

Until then, hey, don't get sentimental on me. Makes me think I'm gonna die.