Karma

“I’m a strong believer in karma,” a passenger stated last night. “It’s a belief which calms me down whenever I’m tested.” We were talking about those occasions like road rage and fare theft which happen to taxi drivers on a regular basis.

The subject arose when I related forfeiting an earlier $12.50 fare to a scammer. She had hailed me outside a brothel in Broadway and requested downtown Darlinghurst.

Aged around fifty years old she was mutton dressed as lamb, peroxide blonde, face like a prune, hooker heels and armfuls of scrungy plastic bags.

It was an old story: first give a wrong address then abuse the driver on arrival; quickly alight from the cab claiming, ”I’ll be back in two secs,”; refuses to leave her bags in the cab; scamper into a unit block leaving me stranded on a clearway in peak hour. Ripped.

After hearing this tale my aforementioned passenger said, “The best thing about karma is you know that sooner or later she will get what’s coming to her.” “Yeah, but that’s based on blind faith,” I countered, “I'd feel much better seeing it actually happen.” Not that I wanted to punish the bitch myself but I’d sure enjoy seeing her karma delivered.*

Yet this didn’t address the other side of the coin – the inevitable karmic reward for copping daily injustices. In this case I was confident that the $12.50 would be returned.

Sure enough, within the hour, two consecutive fares each left $5 tips. That’s karma.

* An Aussie example of macro karma, required reading for aspiring bloggers.

Comments

[Kim]

Wow, people ripping off taxi drivers for a $12.50 fare? That is just too stingy for words. Would it have killed her to pay the $12.50?!!!

But maybe the karma is that her life sucks. A 50 y.o. prostitute's life cannot be a bed of roses. Ugh.

[Don Wigan]

Yeah, interesting thing about that Karma. Maybe there is something in it.

A generation or so back as a young tourist clerk I ended up $10 short in my daily cash balance. Quite a lot of dough then. Actually there weren't too many transactions where the change error could have occurred, and I traced it to a woman who had made a last-minute booking by train from Sydney to Adelaide. No question at all that this was where I'd given back $10 too much change. I could more or less remember the incident and how I'd stuffed up.

I was on leave after that - so my boss followed up. He did forewarn me that we'd have to rely on her honesty. I didn't have any legal leg to stand on if she denied the incident, which she did. So I was $10 down the drain.

There was a postscript. I must have been flustered that day, because I issued her with a single ticket although she'd ordered and paid for (-$10) a return ticket. When she went to go home, the railways wouldn't recognize her ticket. It took several hours of argument at Adelaide Railway Station plus several phone calls to our office in Sydney before it was sorted out. )I was away, which made it a bit harder to verify things.)

When I returned to work and heard the story, my colleague said,

"Wow! You sure did get your own back on her!"

[LaLa]

Wow. Luckily I kept that site up on my screen, it now doesn't exist. I used to read Spin Starts Here, riveting stuff.

[Legal Eagle]

When I was a kid, I couldn't walk properly, and had to have an operation when I was 13 to fix it. I had to learn to walk properly from scratch. A girl in my class started picking on me because I still had some problems walking for the first year or two after the operation. I thought, "I wish something really bad would happen to her, and she would know what it's like to be unable to walk."

I left that school, but I was a bit freaked out to hear later that she had been involved in a very bad car accident when she was about 16 or 17. I saw her in a local supermarket on crutches when I was 20. Then I felt really guilty - like I'd wished it on her. I realised that all I had wanted was for her to know for a few days what it was like to be me - not for her to be permanently injured. I do hope that she recovered to the maximum extent possible. Nevertheless, I wonder if she ever regrets teasing me now that she knows what it's like to learn to walk from scratch?

So: be careful what you wish for! Karma can be spooky.

[Ian]

Adrian, many years ago I drove cabs from about about 1987 to 1992 and here is my Karma Story.

After a very poor night I had just made the pay in and was not looking forward to more driving.

I picked up 2 guys in Bondi Junction wanting to go to the Taxi Club in Darlinghurst, First I was abused for not turning right at a no right turn sign. Then the whole trip consisted of complaing I was not going fast enough, slowed down for red lights, etc,etc. When we got to the Taxi Club there was $3.20 on the Meter (Which tells you how long ago it was!) the 2 guys got out threw a dollar coin at me and walked off. Well I'm not a fighter, certainly can't take on 2 guys and certainly not over $3.20.
Now these two turds had upset me enough that I had to take a break, so I drove down to the little Legion Taxi base in Forvoux St to get a coffee. I had just scrapped together the motivation to continue the shift when I took the decision to Gas up the Cab.
As I was pumping the Gas in I noticed something sitting on back seat of the cab so I opened the door and there it was! A wallet!!! with $260.00 in cash and not just any Wallet there was photo ID and the owner of the Wallet was beyond any shadow of a doubt the property of one of the 2 aformentioned turds!
Ah there is a God of Justice!! How easily His work could have been undone. If only I was not so upset and stopped, any passenger later in the night could of found it, had I not taken that last minute decsion to refuel and noticed it on the seat, .

As a driver I was completly honest with lost property I would always follow the correct procedure to see it returned. Now I know some people would say it's still immoral, and perhaps it was, but these passengers had esentially done a runner on me, and for this passenger I made an exception to usual rules so the $260 was in my pocket and wallet in the bottom of a bin at the cab base.
I knocked off for the evening as $260 back then was take home for 2 good shifts and just pictured the rude bastard feeling around for the wallet and guessing where it was.

[Helen]

Eagles, could one of you please do a post on the TSSH / Lulz Starts Here imbroglio? I'm interested to know things like - could their impersonation of other people on the internet be actionable? what about their behaviour towards An Onomous Lefty, and their publication of a Google Earth photo of somebody's house to "out" them and their location (which the Lulz site has repeated.)? What about the legal status of the present "anti TSSH" action of The Lulz Starts Here? It looks like a can of very juicy legal worms to me!

[Helen]

Sorry Adrian, that was meant for Scepticlawyer and Legal Eagle. Am I the first idiot to post, not just on the wrong thread, but on the wrong blog?!

*scuttles away red faced*

[unique_stephen]

Jamie gave me a free ticket to watch his slow toasting some years ago.