Found this while cleaning out the dressers. Intended on having it framed. Still should. Hey remember that time I won an award for being the best in the city and then got demoted the following day? Well I do. Good times at Desert Cab. #Vegas

So how does the best cabbie in American history get demoted for "below average performance" you ask? Well, I'll tell you about it...

You see the short of it is, I didnt longhaul enough. Or, at all really. Desert Cab had quite the reputation and I know that many of you know what I'm talking about. I knew nothing of it when I first applied there in 2004...

I saw an ad in the paper for a few different cab co's that were all hiring. I didn't know anything about any of them, but one stood about because they advertised "cash daily" instead of a paycheck system. I liked that idea. So I went down to their shop and grabbed an application.

I passed the cabbie bar exam, had a doctor check for a hernia and ensure I wasn't blind and a couple weeks later I found myself arriving for my drivers orientation at Desert.

A slick looking fellow with a girls named stepped into the trailer turned miniature classroom and proudly informed us the 7 of us new prospects, "Congratulations, you've been hired at the best cab company in Las Vegas!"..

He continued, "Desert Cab is the highest booking cab company every year, we're the highest booking cab company every month and we're the highest booking cab company every single day."

I was just dumb enough to think, alright, sounds like I got hired at a good place.

But I didn't know what that really meant. We're the cab companies in competition with one another? I knew nothing. But it didn't take long to figure it out. Longhauling was the answer.

The reason Desert was always #1, with a few others close on their heels, was because the bulk of their drivers longhauled like crazy. And they worked like crazy, 12 hours no break. And drivers who couldn't keep up heard about it from mgmt constantly.

I never felt right just straight up screwing passengers. I can't say I never did it, but I was regularly at the bottom of the average list if that tells you anything. I just wanted to be left alone more than anything. Give me a cab, I'll put in an honest days work and return it.

And bring the car back in one piece, mind you. But that wasn't good enough for Desert. You see, the pit all the drivers against one another with the almighty "average". 150 drivers on a shift, divide the total gross bookings by 150 and you've got your daily average.

Every day the averages for every shift would be posted at the yard, with every driver ranked first to last. All the hot dogs would hurty to look at it every day they reported to work and be constantly asking other drivers, "how much did you book?" But I never gave a shit.

The real bugger was when you first start your shift is temporary. You're not guaranteed to work on any day. So you'd have to show up an hour early get on the wait list and hope for a cab that day. Fridays & Saturdays were especially tough to get out.

And the only way for you're shift to become "permanent" was to be over average for a span of 30 days. And you won't get any benefits until you get permanent status either. Expecting rookie drivers to keep up with the seasoned, unscrupulous, lot is ridiculous. But that's Desert.

Lucky for me, it was a crazy awesome business when I first started. There were rides everywhere. All the time. So you didn't have to longhaul to make average but you didn't do that the only way to keep up was to go 12 hrs no break and hope for the best.

What also made it hard was the highest "book" doesn't always equate to the most cash in your pocket at the end of the night. In fact it rarely does. People you longhaul aren't the best tippers as you might imagine. And for other reasons as well.

I was finally about to get a permanent shift on Halloween, about 4 months after I started. And after that I only cared about how much I made, not how much Desert made. So I was held in very low regard around the shop. I wasn't a "high booker."

Your average related to everything. How nice and new of a cab you got, what shift you got, if they retained you or fired you if you got into a bad accident or did something fucked up. If you got your time off approved. You name it, the average ruled all.

I was "demoted" on multiple occasions actually. I was below average by at least 10% every day. Usually 20. On the average list they would feature the top 3 drivers each night. I got 2nd place once. It was my only appearance in the top 3 in 15 years of working there.

I had a crazy lucky night. Every rude worked out perfect. Even caught a ride to Indian Springs from the airport for $150 in one pop. Deadheading back to town I thought, will I actually get first tonight. Nope. In other news, the guys who did get 1st did so ALL THE TIME.

One night it was raining and a cabbie drove his cab into a puddle that turned out to be a pond and sank his cab. He wasn't fired. Wasn't even suspended. He was a high Booker. If I had done that I woulda been gone for sure. It was a miracle I made it as long as I did. Miracle.

One time they offered a class to teach drivers how to earn them "book" more. I had no intentions of going to it, but as a joke one time I asked the Ops mgr what time the class was bc I was thinking of going...this is how that conversation went...

Ops mgr: "What do you want to go to that for?"
Me: "To increase my book."

He just looked at me with this smirk and said verbatim, "you know what you need to do Andrew."

And he was right, I did know what I needed to do.

Around the same time @ecgladstone was doing a story relating to this nonsense and my OPs mgr was quoted as saying that Desert Cab "didn't punish drivers for low average". Naturally I felt compelled to contact Mr. Gladstone and show him my contradictory write ups.

The only thing that made any of this bearable, was that while all this was going on, my blog was really growing, and the social media was really growing, and even mainstream media started to pay attention to your boy. And that put Desert on guard when deeling with me.

It was kinda perfect for a while. I could do whatever I wanted and never had to hear about it. I was hidden in plain sight. Which was great, because I just wanted to be left alone. I guess they assumed I would go public with everything eventually. They were right about that much.

So I did my thing, and Desert Cab left me alone, more or less. Save a few occasions. Like the time I got demoted literally the day after I won an award for being Best in the City. The irony was inescapable.

Fin.