| Joe Brazil is well
known to all DaC evening shift drivers. He passed the Knowledge in 1999 to
become a fully-fledged London taxi driver, yet still divides his time
between Brunswick House and his taxi. Is BH that good? Call Sign asked
him... Before we start, my official title at Brunswick House is Senior Systems Supervisor, but I prefer Joe...! I passed out in July 1999 and have passed out once or twice since then together with Roy Masterson (IT dept) on our 'around the world' drinking sessions. You buy two beers from every country around the world, but once I get past the Nigerian Guinness, anything else is a bonus! More seriously, I started work for DaC on the phones at the end of 1987 before moving on to the back channel. I switched to the night shift for about five years using the quiet periods to call over my Knowledge runs. Finally I moved to the evening shift, where I am now. I've always enjoyed working for Dial-a-Cab, it's the people you work with that make a job enjoyable and over the years, we've had some great characters here. The office has changed considerably in that time and has become less noisy but more high tech. The comfortable environment and support from the staff and Board help keep you in the job. The strangest thing I remember was during a staff Christmas party on a boat moored at the Victoria Embankment, where a very attractive young telephonist treated us to an impromptu strip to the strains of Donna Summers before being bundled off the dance floor, much to the annoyance of the baying crowd! Names have been withheld to protect the guilty... My oddest story was from a driver who is still on the circuit. He took three Japanese businessmen to the Finchley area |
SPLIT SHIFT
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| with the final passenger asking
for Nether Street. The remaining passenger shouted "stop"
abruptly, which the driver immediately did. The driver said goodnight and
started to fill out his credit book only to turn around and notice that
the passenger had left the door open. He walked around the cab to find the
businessman had stepped into a four-foot deep gas mains repair and was up
to his waist in mud, asking meekly to be helped out of this mud bath. Two
weeks later, a photograph arrived of the driver and his daughter digging
in his back garden 'looking for fares'! Some say I have a better Knowledge than most, but the easy answer is, in all fairness, that many of the fixes I give have been asked before! When we were on voice, you had a collective knowledge, so when a fix was given, every driver heard it. Now that collective knowledge is in the dispatch booth only. I must admit that if we have a regular problem pick up, I tend to have a look whilst out in the cab. Although the relationship between driver and dispatcher has become less personal over the years, I wouldn't say it has become worse as such; the main bone of contention has always been the speed at which |
responses have been received.
Whilst on voice, responses were requested and seemingly answered
immediately, but by the same token, many drivers who heard it were busy
and more inclined to make their own contact or deal with the problem
themselves. By just pressing a button, it's like the proverbial 'watching
a kettle boil', a request or responses waiting queue would give the
drivers the extra feedback required to speed up genuine problem requests
and alleviate workloads in the Call Centre. One last thing that springs to mind was a conversation with a driver on the voice channel during the early hours some years back when he asked why there was a statue of a horse in Queen Elizabeth Street, SE1? I told him it was because brewery horses were rested in that area in years gone by, hence the turning named Horsleydown Lane nearby (horse lie down lane). He thanked me and responded that when I was a little older, he would tell me how Cockspur Street got its name...! Perhaps one day I'll become a full-time cabby, but at the moment I enjoy having a split shift... Joe Brazil |
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