Commenter Of The Day: Yarn Spinning Edition

Today's Commenter wins because I began the DC Cab post with an anecdote about an evil cabbie, and weatherman followed suit. Upon closer inspection this weatherman cat seems to be from the Gizmodo side of the Gawker pool, but that's cool man, that's cool. To wit:

I'll spin a yarn about a DC cab experience: coming from Adams Morgan to Dupont after an evening of merriment, I got a cab with a friend who lived about three blocks from me and dropped her off first. We get to my place and the cabbie wants to charge me double because we were two passengers (and because of the zone system, cabbies in DC are allowed to pick up other passengers along the way and charge them separately). Of course she wasn't another passenger, we were sharing a cab – and the rule in DC is that passengers can request two dropoffs within five blocks from each other..

Anyway, cabbie starts demanding a double fare and I refuse, explaining the rules to him. He gets so agitated he gets out of the cab to come around and .. I don't know, pull me out? beat me up? Who knows! The guy was seriously mad. Afeard for my well-being (and not particularly interested in getting in a fight with a cabbie, as soon as he jumps out of the car I locked his door, and mine of course. Now the cabbie's running around outside his cab (engine running) screaming and pounding on the car. I take my time, carefully count out the exact fare and dump it on the front seat, then I called the police and told them the situation. I waited until he was on the other side of the cab from my door and popped it open and made a quick dash for my door while informing him that I had called the police and that they were on the way. Given the choice between duking it out with me until the cops came or just leaving, he decided to jump in the cab and scoot.

I don't know that anything ever happened to him (I doubt anything since the cops never called me back) but that experience has given me no sympathy for cab drivers in DC. I'm glad to see they're getting away from that stupid zone system that was really only in place to allow the cab drivers to abuse passengers in many different ways.

We like the quick thinking and the image of duking it out with a cabbie.