So if a cab driver tries the flat fee scam on you, should you use him anyway? Should you tip?
A cabbie tried to rob me Wednesday afternoon. At the cab stand outside Navy Pier. An inversion, a role reversal: Typically, it is the cabbie being robbed by the customer.
Having spent a productive half day at the Sun-Times newsroom — there was a Christmas lunch — I had just strode through the tourist commotion at the Pier, burst out the doors, tossed a glance at the CTA bus corral to the right, didn't see a waiting No. 124, so veered left to the stand, approached a cab, opened the door.
"Where to?" the driver asked.
"Union Station," I said, starting to climb in the back. "Madison Street entrance."
"It's a $15 flat fee..." the cabbie ventured.
I froze.
"No it's not," I replied. "I'll take the bus."
"Get in," he said.
Here is the surprising part. I got in.
"Run the meter," I said.
As we pulled away from the curb, I asked myself: Why patronize the guy who just tried to rip you off? The short answer: expediency. There was no other cab. If I indeed went back to the bus, I would miss the train. This driver wasn't a hardened felon, just another hardworking jamoke, trolling the bait to see if I was ignorant enough to snap. I was, after all, at Navy Pier at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday. How on the ball could I be? Fleecing the rubes is a hallowed Chicago tradition. I'm lucky he didn't try to steal my land while he was at it.
As we drove past Lake Point Tower, the driver started talking on the phone in a foreign language. Thanks to WhatsApp, cabbies hold continual conversations as they drive. It's annoying, but what can you do? Me, a chatterbox, began talking to him anyway.
"Here I try to do the right thing and patronize cabs instead of Uber, and my reward is, you try to rip me off ..." I prattled.
He replied that Uber is the true rip-off.
"With their surge pricing," he said. "How am I supposed to make it?"
I agreed, and we bonded over trash-talking Uber. I told him I had met Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who earns up to $100 million a year. But that didn't register.
The cab plunged into Lower Wacker Drive. Maybe I'm a sap, but I found myself noticing how slowly the meter crawled upward from $3.25, feeling almost sorry for the guy, almost guilty for calling out his "flat fee" ploy. It isn't as if I couldn't afford the extra $5 — I'd give that to any Venezuelan lady sitting with her kid on a street corner. Giving a dollar nowadays, jeez, feels like handing someone a dime. You can't buy a candy bar at Walmart for a dollar (truly, I checked — a 1.55 ounce Hershey bar is $1.32).
"I'm not a rich man myself," I lied, then asked him if he has a family.
"Of course!" he said. I liked that enthusiastic "Of course!" — it conveyed, "Who doesn't have a family?" Just the other day, I interviewed a young television actor and asked him if he was married or has kids, somewhat idiotically, since he's practically a kid himself. He said he wasn't and didn't.
"Children are a great comfort when you get old and the rest of your life starts to go to hell," I said, or words to that effect.
We emerged from Lower Wacker Drive at South Wacker and entered the logjam trying to turn right. The meter hit $9. I realized with self-reproach that I was going to tip the guy, and that in a moment I'd have to twist my body to the right, dig into my pants pocket, extract my money clip and add a single to the ten spot already in my hand to make it a decent tip. That suddenly seemed like a lot of effort. The cab only moved a few car lengths because the intersection of Madison and Wacker was gridlocked. When the meter clicked to $9.25, I handed him the ten and jumped out.
"I'll walk from here." I said. "I'm tipping you even though you tried to rip me off."
For one moment I considered taking a photo of his bright green cab, maybe turning him in to the city. But that seemed worse than the crime. I'm not the Taxi Police.
It's a good reminder: You need to be on your guard in the big city, always ready for someone to try to rob you. It's part of being a Chicagoan.