Bizarre Journey!

[collareddove12]

On Saturday our Son picked us up to go to his house 45mins away for a family celebration. A taxi was booked earlier for us to be collected to take us home. It arrived 20 mins late but we thought we haven't got to be anywhere at a certain time. We were in the car about 8 mins and he pulled into the loading area of the local Coop, he obviously didn't speak much English because he got out without a word, got something out the boot, looked like a bag, wondered if he was drug dealing! He walked away from car laid it on ground (it was a prayer mat) and knelt and prayed. He then got back in car, without a word and we continued our journey. We don't get out much nowadays and wondered does this happen regularly when prayer time?

[gingejbee]

Yes, but the vicar looks a prat in Waitrose.

[New Judge]

Get on to the taxi operator to complain and if they don't deal with it get on to the licencing authority. You don't pay a taxi fare to sit around whilst the driver faffs about.

It has never happened to me, though I did have a journey where the driver spent the entire trip arguing with somebody on his hands free loudspeaker phone. He did not acknowledge our presence at all, didn't ask where we were going (though I'd booked and paid via an app, so it was logged anyway), didn't check we were OK before moving off and continued to rant at our destination whilst holding out his hand for a tip. I gave him two - don't get involved in heated arguments whilst you're driving passengers around and acknowledge their presence and check that they are securely seated before driving off.

I contacted his operator who clearly didn't want to upset him so I got on to the licencing authority. They took a statement from me, interviewed him and gave him some "advice". He turned up a few weeks later to pick me up again. I sent him away and used another company.

[gness]

Taxi drivers can be odd, Collareddove. I once booked a taxi from Kettering in Northants to Birmingham Airport. A regular trip in my own car taking about 50 mins.
Don't know if the nationality of the driver had anything to do with it but he refused to listen to a mere woman who questioned his route. He knew what he was doing. So I shut up, let him get on with it and we ended up in Penistone in Yorks some hours later.
The two Yorkshire motorcycle cops he asked about Birmingham airport stopped laughing long enough to suggest he went back down the motorway for a couple of hours.
He wouldn't and insisted on heading east. I phoned friends in Grimsby to ask if we could stay the night....was a very, very long day. :-)

[Canary42]

I hate having to use taxis since my driving ban (medical, not driving offence) because one then has to listen to a biassed *** putting the world to rights for the entire journey. My last driver was female and she was mercifully quite and concentrated on her driving, so I tipped more generously than usual.

[Canary42]

*quiet

[237SJ]

I wouldn't have been too happy with that. I was once in a taxi (on my own), going back from a friend's place in Sydney (or Brisbane, can't remember) to my hotel. When we got to the traffic lights, the driver got into an altercation with another driver. He jumped out of the taxi, squared up to the other bloke, threatened to punch his lights out and then got back into the cab. He said "Sorry about that" and we continued on our way. Only in Australia..

[Toorak]

I was working in Perth (Australia) and hailed a taxi to get to a project I had to visit in the suburbs. Within a minute I realised that the driver was an unapologetic racist who spat vitriolic abuse at every driver he saw who was obviously not a white Australian. I was desperate to get out but had no idea where I was (I was only in Perth for a few days) so I had to sit it out (and hope that I didn’t end up getting him again when I had to go back to the city centre) :-(

[jno]

lol, Canary, I once had a cabbie telling me Leon Brittan was a slimy little Jew. My eyes may have opened a bit wider at this because he added "I can say this because I'm a slimy little Jew myself".

Sometimes you don't know what to reply.

[237SJ]

Many years ago I took my Mum to Istanbul for a few days. We got a cab from the airport and we went on our merry way for a while. The taxi driver had a picture on a younger man on his dashboard and kept pointing to it and then to my Mum and I. He didn't speak English but I realised he was trying to say that the picture was of his son and was I with my Mum. That was OK until he started weaving all over the road, laughing hysterically and constantly tooting his horn. In all my years of travel, that was the only time I felt *** scared (even more than going along a road in South Africa where rival taxi companies were shooting guns across the road ahead of us)

[collareddove12]

Thanks for all your replies, seems a taxi ride is not simply a journey from A to B nowadays