Reflection On My Termination as a Comfort Cabby

Lately, I can't spent much time at my computer because I would quickly develop a splitting headache while looking at the monitor. As I wrote these words, I tried to avoid focusing at the screen to mitigate the pain. Reducing the brightness and contrasts of the monitor didn't help much. "Panadol" is my quick pain reliever. My font size is now at it's maximum.

I guess my headache is due of an eye condition I was recently diagnosed with called "Glaucoma"..which has been called the "silent thief of sight" because the loss of vision often occurs gradually over a long period of time. Once lost, vision is irreversible, so treatment is aimed at preventing further loss. If untreated, it would lead to complete blindness in a few years.

Fortunately, only my right eyed is 70% blinded. My left eye is perfect. With daily eye drops to reduce the eye pressure that damage the optic nerves, my vision is maintained. But straining my eyes to focus would tend to initiate a headache. Now, I spent less time with the love of my life...reading and cyber space. 

Sometime I felt a tinge of sadness and misgivings. I wonder and so do many elderly people, how did time sped away so quickly? Wasn't it just yesterday that my eye sights and legs were stronger? My hairs is still reasonably black but my skin is crumpled with age spots. Yesterday, my memories were like daylight. And climbing, running, jumping and squatting were taken for granted? Today, aches, pains and comatose are my un-welcomed friends. I learn to be philosophical and accept these changes that are beyond my control.

Growing old is like a journey on a train. You want to stay on to watch life pass by but your ticket has expired and the ticket inspector expelled you. Though I cannot resist growing old or avoid been eventually expelled, I hope to be as active as possible in my remaining years. 

Now, this brings me to share with you a recent part of my active working life as a Singaporean cabby, albeit depressing in certain aspect.

I've been a loyal taxi driver with Comfort for close to 7 years and like 25,000 of my fellow Comfort drivers, I had invariably contributed in a small way to their recent revenue of S$239 millions. During this period of driving, I ferried at least 50,000 passengers. Inevitably, some of my customers are pleased with my service while some may not. 

Honestly, I received more compliments than brickbats. While compliments are seldom relied to Comfort, complaints gets their immediate action. Two or three complaints from 50,000 passengers will get a driver the sack, irrespective of the nature, triviality or truthfulness of the complaint, .

You might think that Comfort is strict with drivers so that passengers will get better customer service. No, I wish to differ. Please allow me to explain:

Firstly, if a hirer of Sonata taxi, paying a rental of $105 is sacked, Comfort can immediately re-lease out the same taxi to a new hirer at $115...an additional rental income of $10 per day. In a year, Comfort gets an additional income of $3,600 per taxi. If 3,000 Sonota taxis are recycled to a new hirer, an additional income of $10.8million is generated annually. Comfort has about 12,000 Sonata taxis to recycle and a large pool of anxious taxi drivers waiting to join them. Recycling only 3,000 Sonata taxi is an easy target to achieve. Therefore, in reality, they egregiously sack many of their Sonata drivers for the lucrative millions and certainly not to improve better customer service for passengers.

Secondly, Comfort has a department delegated to handle passengers complaints. It is staffed with 3 or 4 executive officers, each with a private office and assistants. Most of these officers are long service old-timers. Day in and day out, they handle routine complaints of almost similar nature, like driver is rude, taking longer route, refusing to pick passengers, rejecting cashless payment, overcharging, late pick-up, silent-treatment, reckless driving and the list of complaints goes on and on.

My point is " Routine work breeds complacency and mediocrity". These Comfort officers hardly conduct thorough investigation into a passenger's complaint. They never leave their comfortable chair and desk to seek evidences, witness or visit the site of complaint for collaboration. Usually, they will call up the driver for their explanation and at most, they invite the taxi driver to their office to hear the driver's side of the story. Thereafter and inveterately without fail, they will issue the driver a STANDARD warning letter stressing that the driver had committed a service lapse and failed to uphold the company's good image.

In the taxi market, every taxi driver knows that Comfort would only accept the passenger's side of the story and penalize their drivers unreasonably. They unconditionally side with the passengers. In addition, any passenger who made a successful complaint gets rewarded with free taxi vouchers. If Comfort treat their so badly, why do taxi drivers still want join Comfort?. Well, Comfort has plenty of call bookings and taxi drivers love it as it improves their income. But this preference for joining Comfort will change with third party taxi booking applications like GrabTaxi, EasyCab and Uber coming into the market!

Now, I know that Comfort is basically a taxi rental company. I lease their taxi and is obligated to adhere to their rules and regulation. They have the prerogative to terminate our lease contract and I enjoy the same rights too because I can join another taxi operator as and when I like. But is it fair to terminate a contract arbitrary and solely based on a frivolous complaint or worst, due a mediocre officer job performance?. That's is my main point of contention.

Now, I let me be honest and tell you the reason for my grouses. I felt my contract was unfairly terminated recently.

Please allow me to share with you my case file.

At lunch time about three weeks ago, I picked up 4 Chinese office girls from Star Shopping Mall at North Buona Vista. It was drizzling lightly. They wanted to drop off at their office at Ulu Pandan Community Club at Ghim Moh Estate. They were probably in their mid-twenties and were People's Association office staff.
After they boarded my cab, I offered my towel for them to wipe off whatever rain water that might be at the back doors. One lady at the back said that she had already used her hand to dry the few wet spots and returned my towel. I expressed my gratitude for their initiative. They were pleased with my politeness and began happily chatting among themselves until we approached the lobby of the building.