The ethical driver

Here on Clove Island I take taxis regularly. Now, this isn't the sort of taxi you might imagine-- a car to yourself and a meter running to tell you how much to pay. No, it's shared, and the price is set. For approximately 55 cents I can go anywhere in the capital region. The driver picks up and drops off passengers at their individual destinations.

So here's how it works: 1) you stick our your hand at a taxi that's going the way you want to go, 2) you tell the driver where you're going, 3) if he agrees, you get in, and 4) eventually you arrive at your destination.

This is where a sense of ethics comes in on the taxi driver's part. Sometimes you get a driver who just wants you to be his passenger and will obscure where he's going, "Sure! Hop in! I'll take you there!" he says, even though he knows the other passengers aren't going your direction.

I recently had a driver pick me up after agreeing that we were all going to the same town. When we took a wrong turn at the intersection, I questioned him, "You're sure we're going to M-town?" "Yes, yes! We're just getting something for this old man passenger first." Um, ok.

What were we getting for the older gentleman? He wanted one, perfectly ripe, small tomato, being sold for 20 cents. We proceeded to drive through the slowest traffic, past the most congested parts of town looking for his tomato, then circling back past where they'd picked me up, to continue on our way to M-town. An ethical driver would have told me to take another taxi, because we were going to take 45 minutes for what could be less than 10 minutes.

Ethics matter, y'all.