{"id":3219,"date":"2008-03-10T08:25:08","date_gmt":"2008-03-10T13:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/03\/give_him_credit_for_being_such_a_moron.html"},"modified":"2008-03-10T08:25:08","modified_gmt":"2008-03-10T13:25:08","slug":"give_him_credit_for_being_such_a_moron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/03\/give_him_credit_for_being_such_a_moron.html","title":{"rendered":"Give Him Credit For Being Such A Moron"},"content":{"rendered":"

A cab driver who knows he’s driving around the former transportation reporter for the Post and still<\/em> refuses to take his credit card is basically an idiot<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I went to taxi court, won my case and <\/em>still wound up feeling guilty. <\/p>\n

My cabdriver, Surjit Singh, had been completely in the wrong, but as I watched him squirm on the hot seat three feet away from me as though he were being tried for high treason and not Taxi and Limousine Commission Violation No. 2-61A1, I began to regret ever calling the city to complain. <\/p>\n

Back on Dec. 28, Singh took me from Kennedy Airport to Brooklyn. <\/p>\n

I told him that I used to be the transportation reporter for The Post and well understood the concerns about the new GPS and credit-card systems that had sparked two strikes. We even talked about a slew of recent news stories about how drivers were being fined for refusing to allow passengers to pay by plastic. <\/p>\n

Then, as I watched the meter tick off the fare, I realized I wasn’t going to have enough cash to also give him a tip. But when I asked if I could pay by credit card, he lied and said the system was broken. I told him that it was clearly working and that I would tip double, more than covering the 5 percent transaction fee, but he insisted I go to an ATM. <\/p>\n

After the ride, I called the city, and they scheduled a hearing for six weeks later, by which time I was no longer the slightest bit upset about it. Due to this cooling-off period, as few as 20 percent of passengers actually end up following through on their complaints, officials said. <\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

An hour later, the judge came back with her decision. Singh was fined $500 for refusing to let me pay by credit card and for fraud, violations that put four points on his hack license. Two more points within a 15-month period and he would be suspended for 30 days; six more and his hack license would be revoked. <\/p>\n

The whole thing seemed so excessive that if I had had the $500 in my wallet, I might have handed it to him.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A cab driver who knows he’s driving around the former transportation reporter for the Post and still refuses to take his credit card is basically an idiot: I went to taxi court, won my case and still wound up feeling guilty. My cabdriver, Surjit Singh, had been completely in the wrong, but as I watched […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture_infrastructure","category-well_what_did_you_expect"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}