CD: A ride to remember/ Unintentionally criminal!
My blog has been chock-full of serious stuff . Here's one on the lighter side, for a change. A real-life incident.
About a month ago, Ramya(the character who keeps appearing in just about every funny post I write:D) was visiting Bangalore. A bunch of us friends decided to meet her and catch up. We picked a place, met in the afternoon and talked nineteen to the dozen over good food. Everything went as expected and then it was time to leave. My friend(Sush) booked a cab since we were all headed to the same place. It was then that the skies decided to open up and share their vast sorrows with us. While three of the four of us had laptops, only one of us had the foresight to bring along an umbrella(kid, kudos to you!:P).
This particular conglomeration of circumstances had many woeful implications for us: the traffic would, of course , go from worse to unimaginably snail-paced bordering on immobile, we stood a fair chance of getting drenched, and our laptops, our eternal companions, would probably end up in a sorry state if they were exposed to the ill-timed benediction of Zeus. Somehow, our cab arrived, and we made it in with minimal water damage.
As Murphy would have it, the rain persisted, the traffic crawled forward, and what should have taken a mere 10 minutes took the better part of an hour. But that's the part about being with friends, especially those you know well and meet after a long time. We had so much to talk, so much to laugh about, that we just didn't realize how time flew by. Needless to say, we were a very boisterous crowd and our decibel level probably grated on the driver's ears. Either that, or he just zoned us out. We didn't hear a word from him throughout, nor did we bother to strike up a conversation with him.
Finally, we looked up and realized that our destination was a few seconds away. Here's where the story changes. All of us(at least us millennials) have gotten so used to using digital payment methods that we rarely choose cash. Which means that unless the person who booked the cab explicitly tells us that we're paying by cash, we assume that they're using some sort of a digital wallet. Coming to the present moment, we had one tiny umbrella, and 200m of unsheltered ground to cover in the pouring rain before we reached safe ground.
What do you think we did? The moment the vehicle stopped, we mumbled our thanks, threw open the doors and ran for our lives. We did not look back till we reached a flight of stairs in my friend's apartment. Despite our valiant attempts, we were partially drenched as is the case in a heavy downpour. We were still shivering, when my responsible friend with the umbrella asks of us: "Did any of you leave anything behind in the cab?" We do the customary phone-wallet check in our pockets and reply "No. But why do you ask?"
"Coz the driver seemed to be calling us...I'm not sure, but I think I saw him yelling or waving. I too didn't stop, because it was raining quite heavily"
This is downright weird, we muse. Why would he be calling us! Sush, by then, checks her phone, and finds to her growing dismay and alarm, that the payment mode was set to cash. It hit all of us at the same time That's why he was yelling. Because we hadn't paid him.
We are good people and obviously, we wanted to pay him immediately. But by this time, a good five minutes had elapsed, and the fact that he had not followed us inside sort of meant that he wasn't outside waiting for us. Despite that, Sush and I took the lone umbrella from the kid and went outside to look. He was nowhere to be seen.
Our next thought predictably was to call him. That's when we found this about Uber. You cannot get your driver's number once your ride has ended, possibly because they want that data to be kept private. But this was bad news for us: we had no way to contact him. He had also promptly arrived at our location, so we didn't even have to call him. No possibility of having his number in our call records either. This probably works both ways and that explains why we haven't yet gotten a call from an irate driver demanding his rightful money. At that moment, we cursed this feature--it seemed more like stupidity.
"Damn! I don't know how this got set to cash. I always use a wallet. Poor guy, he drove us around for one hour in this miserable traffic and horrible weather, and we didn't even pay him." Sush feels remorseful. So do I. I also remember noticing earlier that he was a Muslim, and it happened to be Eid that day. Makes it worse. Imagine that you were working on a festival day(which already sucks right?), and right around dinnertime this loud crowd of people get in and keep yapping throughout the ride(compounded by the rain and traffic), and then run away without paying you. Could it get any worse? He must probably be cursing all of humanity now.
Sush was poring through the app for any way to get his number(honestly none of us explored the app as much as we did that day), and she finally stumbled upon an option that said "I left something in the cab". She tried this because it held that one last glimmer of hope. It worked. We got his number.
She called him, and I have to say, that guy was one good human being with loads of patience. He didn't even raise his voice, politely listened to her apologies and reason for the mistake, and accepted her offer of a digital payment. We paid him immediately, and that was that.
We headed upstairs, and by the warmth of a cozy sofa and amicable conversation, we gained that perspective that retrospection bestows upon our blunders--hilarity. What perfect comic timing we had! To open the doors and just run away, as if we were thieves, while the bewildered driver tried to call us. It seemed incredibly funny and straight out of some melodramatic film in the 80s. Ah, the insane things we do in our youth! That was quite a ride though:D
About a month ago, Ramya(the character who keeps appearing in just about every funny post I write:D) was visiting Bangalore. A bunch of us friends decided to meet her and catch up. We picked a place, met in the afternoon and talked nineteen to the dozen over good food. Everything went as expected and then it was time to leave. My friend(Sush) booked a cab since we were all headed to the same place. It was then that the skies decided to open up and share their vast sorrows with us. While three of the four of us had laptops, only one of us had the foresight to bring along an umbrella(kid, kudos to you!:P).
This particular conglomeration of circumstances had many woeful implications for us: the traffic would, of course , go from worse to unimaginably snail-paced bordering on immobile, we stood a fair chance of getting drenched, and our laptops, our eternal companions, would probably end up in a sorry state if they were exposed to the ill-timed benediction of Zeus. Somehow, our cab arrived, and we made it in with minimal water damage.
As Murphy would have it, the rain persisted, the traffic crawled forward, and what should have taken a mere 10 minutes took the better part of an hour. But that's the part about being with friends, especially those you know well and meet after a long time. We had so much to talk, so much to laugh about, that we just didn't realize how time flew by. Needless to say, we were a very boisterous crowd and our decibel level probably grated on the driver's ears. Either that, or he just zoned us out. We didn't hear a word from him throughout, nor did we bother to strike up a conversation with him.
Finally, we looked up and realized that our destination was a few seconds away. Here's where the story changes. All of us(at least us millennials) have gotten so used to using digital payment methods that we rarely choose cash. Which means that unless the person who booked the cab explicitly tells us that we're paying by cash, we assume that they're using some sort of a digital wallet. Coming to the present moment, we had one tiny umbrella, and 200m of unsheltered ground to cover in the pouring rain before we reached safe ground.
"Coz the driver seemed to be calling us...I'm not sure, but I think I saw him yelling or waving. I too didn't stop, because it was raining quite heavily"
This is downright weird, we muse. Why would he be calling us! Sush, by then, checks her phone, and finds to her growing dismay and alarm, that the payment mode was set to cash. It hit all of us at the same time That's why he was yelling. Because we hadn't paid him.
We are good people and obviously, we wanted to pay him immediately. But by this time, a good five minutes had elapsed, and the fact that he had not followed us inside sort of meant that he wasn't outside waiting for us. Despite that, Sush and I took the lone umbrella from the kid and went outside to look. He was nowhere to be seen.
Our next thought predictably was to call him. That's when we found this about Uber. You cannot get your driver's number once your ride has ended, possibly because they want that data to be kept private. But this was bad news for us: we had no way to contact him. He had also promptly arrived at our location, so we didn't even have to call him. No possibility of having his number in our call records either. This probably works both ways and that explains why we haven't yet gotten a call from an irate driver demanding his rightful money. At that moment, we cursed this feature--it seemed more like stupidity.
"Damn! I don't know how this got set to cash. I always use a wallet. Poor guy, he drove us around for one hour in this miserable traffic and horrible weather, and we didn't even pay him." Sush feels remorseful. So do I. I also remember noticing earlier that he was a Muslim, and it happened to be Eid that day. Makes it worse. Imagine that you were working on a festival day(which already sucks right?), and right around dinnertime this loud crowd of people get in and keep yapping throughout the ride(compounded by the rain and traffic), and then run away without paying you. Could it get any worse? He must probably be cursing all of humanity now.
Sush was poring through the app for any way to get his number(honestly none of us explored the app as much as we did that day), and she finally stumbled upon an option that said "I left something in the cab". She tried this because it held that one last glimmer of hope. It worked. We got his number.
She called him, and I have to say, that guy was one good human being with loads of patience. He didn't even raise his voice, politely listened to her apologies and reason for the mistake, and accepted her offer of a digital payment. We paid him immediately, and that was that.
We headed upstairs, and by the warmth of a cozy sofa and amicable conversation, we gained that perspective that retrospection bestows upon our blunders--hilarity. What perfect comic timing we had! To open the doors and just run away, as if we were thieves, while the bewildered driver tried to call us. It seemed incredibly funny and straight out of some melodramatic film in the 80s. Ah, the insane things we do in our youth! That was quite a ride though:D
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