I hate New York taxi drivers. Apart from being the least polite and least courteous to their customers, New York taxi drivers have one of the worst driving records.
It is no wonder they are traditionally an unpopular and despised group. If you ask me why I hate New York taxi drivers, I would say it is because of long and bitter experience of dealing with those who drive the city’s famous yellow cabs.
I had my worst experience several years ago when I was in New York for a few days one bitterly cold winter. I had to take a pre-dawn flight out of the city and my bad luck made me choose the most unpleasant of taxi drivers to take me to the airport.
He happened to be a Korean. At first I didn’t know his nationality but I soon found out when, like most taxi drivers, he started talking.
He asked me first where I came from and I proudly told him I was from Saudi Arabia. He stopped the car at once and told me to get out. In shock and disbelief, I asked why. “I will not drive a Saudi whose country has disgraced us,” he said firmly.
“What disgrace you are taking about?” I asked. “Your football team beat ours four nil and that was humiliating for us.”
I asked myself what kind of shallow-minded idiot I had chosen to drive me to the airport on that cold morning. As it was four o’clock and the streets were deserted, I told him it would not be easy to find another taxi and that I might even miss my flight.
He was, however, adamant. I thought of just refusing but instead, I told him that if he forced me out, I would call the taxi company and file a complaint against him.
The threat worked and the angry driver was on the road again — but not without playing a cassette of curses and abusive language which I fortunately could not understand since it was in a mixture of English and what I took to be Korean.
He played the cassette non-stop until we got to the airport and I got out, I paid him an extra four dollars, telling him that each dollar was for one of the Saudi goals scored against Korea. I left him as quickly as I could, his flood of abuses and curses following me.
Soon I was safely inside the terminal and hearing what I had never before thought was a really pleasant voice, saying nothing exciting except announcing the times of flight departures.
