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It wasn't something I ever wanted to do. I was taught respect for unions, but I found myself in a real pickle.
I was driving a cab in Atlanta - the Chamblee/Doraville area - and I got a call to pick this guy up at his apartment and take him to work. When we got to the factory, there were about a hundred people lined up outside a fence, holding signs and looking bored. They weren't bored for long.
"What the fuck is this?" I asked my passenger.
"Picket line," he said nervously.
"Holy shit." I was incredulous. Was this really happening to me?
"Just pull up to the gate. The guard will let you through."
As I turned in and approached the gate, the strikers came to angry life, yelling all manner of foul things at me. A guard came out of the shack and lifted the bar to let me through. And I knew, instinctively, that it was worth my job to refuse to go inside. That was the kind of company it was. The owners were wingnut, racist, redneck assholes. The only way I could keep paying rent on my little flophouse for the foreseeable future was to drive their shitty cab. And here I was at the picket line, at the moment of truth, 25 years old and green beyond my years. The guard beckoned me forward urgently. Some of the picketers began to thump my cab. I moved forward. One guy in particular was just frenzied in his denunciations of me, yelling things I needn't repeat. Several times he yelled, "Scab cab! Scab cab!"
"How the fuck did I get into this?" I wondered aloud.
Inside the gate, the passenger explained that these people had been making $28 an hour but the company was bought and the new owners offered only $16.
"$16 an hour? Shit. Get me an application. I've never made more than half that in my life." I wasn't just green, I was fucking HUNGRY.
On the way back out, the angry guy was blocking me, refusing to move. He cursed me a blue streak as he stood in front of my car. It got under my skin, and finally I snapped.
"FUCK YOU!!!" I shouted at last, giving him my best hairy eyeball. I was ready to get out and beat him senseless. He laughed at me then, and I realized that he had won.
"Fuck you," he said with an evil grin. He laughed some more and kept saying, "Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!" I went home early and got shitfaced. "Fuck this shit." So much for the romance of being a cabbie.
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