Are Seattle Cabbies the Best?
We'll admit it--we programmed Orange Cab into our cell phone just because we thought it was funny--it's not Yellow Cab and what do oranges have to do with Seattle? As with most major decisions in our lives, we made it capriciously and with great good luck.
We've also noticed that our cabbies are uniformly pleasant to talk to. We've never had to talk when we don't want to, we've never had to endure political rants or white-knuckle-inducing drivers, and we've more than once had charming conversations that stuck with us.
Case in point: We're in Oakland, we get bumped from our flight all the way to the San Jose airport. The cab driver who takes us there spends the ride talking on the phone and eating a yogurt (simultaneously, of course) all the while telling us we'll never make the flight. Nice. Meanwhile, in Seattle, our Orange Cab comes on time but we've forgotten something. We apologize to the driver and tell him to start the meter while we sprint upstairs. Later, when we just manage to miss the drawbridge going up on the First Avenue bridge, the cabbie turns and says, "I knew we were a lucky pair." He has decided that our moment of goodwill--which, to us, wasn't goodwill necessarily, more like reality--was actually a karmic action that is now being repaid. We'll go with that; we made the flight.
We also had an Orange Cab driver who was shocked that we refused extra blank receipts and then praised us for our honesty.
Maybe we love them because they love us, but basically we love anyone who doesn't eat yogurt while they drive.
Seattle Magazine even recently mentioned Orange Cab as a "great place to work" because the dispatchers are allowed to read magazines in-between calls. We'd love to link to story, but the Seattle Mag website stinks.
What do you think...are you a Yellow Cab devotee or a Red Top man? What's your cab of choice?
