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Have The Dummies Taken Over      (Continued)

As for his comment on a surcharge during peak hours, we have a special account that credit customers can avail themselves of which permits drivers to blow in £1 over the meter. I am all in favour with anything reasonable that puts money into the drivers pockets while at the same time gives the sort of service the customer can rely on. That’s a winning combination. But I shudder to think of what would happen to that £1 surcharge in Mr Spiro’s extremely desperate financial position? After eight minutes waiting, would it be £2?

Another of Mr. Spiro’s comments about me being a right ‘Charlie’. Well he is right to a degree, I often say to myself (usually after a conversation with someone like Mr. Spiro), that I must be a right ‘Charlie’ for trying to convince customers that not all the drivers are villains and conning them, while at the same time trying to console our telephonists who have to accept all the verbal abuse on behalf of the drivers for the non-appearance or lateness of a taxi, for which they are entirely blameless. Make no mistake about it, they do a fantastic job but get very disheartened by some of the customers comments on our reliability. Unfortunately for our society - and here I am speaking on a purely personal note and not for anyone else (though they may agree with me) - the minority element of Mr Spiro’s that we have on the circuit are of no particular asset to us, albeit that they do cover credit work. This is the only conclusion that I can come to after Mr Spiro’s remarks regarding jobs that are of no value to him unless he is going home. With the money he expects, maybe he should buy houses in various places, that way he could turn these jobs into good financial returns. His remark about the fact that his £17 a month subs allows him to do as he pleases, really now!  When he joined the society, I am sure he was able to read and I’m sure he was given a rulebook. I know he freely signed and has continued to pay his subs all this time, quite aware of the fact that he, like the rest of us, has morally committed himself to the rules to serve his own and also the societies interests. He now states that if the society’s goodwill even slightly infringes upon his own self-interests, then he is not interested. It beats me why he bothers, and is still on radio. Not for him the fact that the radio does give him an edge over the non-radio man plus other fringe benefits that belonging to a society brings. His only interest is non-involvement. £17 has bought the heart and soul of every employee of the society.

I’d like to point out that the essence of belonging to the society is to be able to achieve better things and the fact that it’s a co-operative - strength in unity. Mr Spiro doesn’t apparently believe in the spirit of co-operation, nor can he believe in the spirit of give and take. By his own admission in print and verbally, TAKE is the biggest word in his vocabulary. Back to his comments about a lot more credit work would be covered by ‘greedy’ subscribers if they felt that the financial returns were worthwhile. Mr Spiro, I believe that I am in a better overall position than you to judge whether drivers are greedy. We have a nuclease of drivers who cover a prodigious amount of credit work that far exceeds your own not immodest amount. They also work for their own financial gain, but there the similarity ends. Not from them do you hear a peep or bleat about how hard up they are and can the society not squeeze the customers a bit harder. Rather, they work on the swings and roundabout theory, realising that things will get better with their active co-operation (that word again), and meanwhile earning themselves a fair living while also doing their utmost to create goodwill by coverage.

I’m nearly finished now - but not quite. I hope that you, the readers, are still hanging on. Re Mr Spiro’s comments on my alleged statement of how many credit customers were lost over Christmas. He has taken my remarks out of context and also forgotten some of them. I will repeat them for clarification. I said that we COULD have lost some of our accounts due to non-realistic run-ins, but a misunderstanding over the way they should have been given and also because of the over eagerness of some drivers to help. I’ll just quote two: 1/ Bush house to South Lambeth Rd £14 and 2/ Harpenden to Bush House £28. I will not go into reasons how these run-ins came about, but suffice to say that had we not spotted them. What do you think the customer would have said Mr. Spiro? Any realistic run-in or payment has my blessing, but I will not compromise the society, nor expect any of my staff to be put into the position of answering to any person outside of this trade for the kind of insatiable appetite that a small minority have for money. (Cont)…