Difference of Opinion

A while back when I was driving cabs on a Saturday Night I took a couple of twenty-something guys out to Valentine from Newcastle.  This was about a $20 fare at the time - nothing to be sneezed at, really, as you'd be taking about $250 in total for a good Saturday night, so it was 8% of the nightly takings - some nights the proportion would be higher.

Of course you'd get the occasional "bolt" - where your passengers would get close to their destination, and simply bolt.  And in every case where I've been the victim of a bolt, I'd never seen the passengers again.  Hell, one night I went from Wyong Golf Club up to Morisset with a group of three passengers, and I'm pretty sure I saw the house where they ran into - but of course when I knocked on the door, the guy answering it played dumb and said he had no idea what I was referring to.

Naturally for a police charge to be lain you'd have to be able to identify the passengers (huh!) and be able to find them again later so the police would actually be able to lay charges.  Not much chance of that, really.

So when I dropped these two off down at Valentine, my heart sank as one of them threw open the door and was off like a shot into the dark.

The other guy was still in the back seat.  I remember him saying "It looks like I'm a bit more honest than my mate - he's done the bolt but I can't bring myself to join him - What's on the meter?"  He then paid me the fare and walked off, leaving me collecting my jaw from the floor!