Thursday, November 15, 2007

More Driver Woes

This blog entry was originally about buggers. Well, more precisely, it covered the topic of nose picking here in the Thailand. I say "covered" instead of "would have covered" because I actually wrote the entry out on a yellow notepad. Unfortunately, the notepad is no longer in my possession.

On the way to the grocery store today, I sat in the back seat of the car and wrote out a draft of my blog article. When I arrived, I took the yellow pad and my grocery list into the store and did my shopping. I placed the pad at the bottom of the cart. I had the driver unload the cart into the car, while I ran back into the store to pick up lunch.

I didn't see the notepad when I got back into the car, and I just assumed that it was in the trunk with the groceries. Later in the afternoon, when I could not find the notepad, I called Tim and asked her to speak to the driver. She called me back a few minutes later. He had seen the notepad while unloading the cart, but had left it in there. He didn't know if it was mine, so he left it in there. The driver told Tim that it had a lot of writing on it (in English mind you) so he assumed it wasn't mine.

Aside from the insult that I might not be intelligent enough to write a lot on a notepad, I had been writing the entire time in the back seat. Okay, even if he didn't see me write and thought me too much a dullard to write much, why wouldn't he pick it up if he wasn't certain. If he wasn't certain, wouldn't the reasonably intelligent thing to do have been to take it and asked? If it was mine, then I would have the notepad. If not, we could put it back in the cart.

Unfortunately, this is not this driver's first problem that we've had with this driver. We decided to go to an amusement park named Dreamworld a few weeks back with some neighbors. Its about an hour away from our house with traffic, and the driver assured us he knew the way. Instead of driving to Dreamworld, the driver drove to Safari World on the other side of town. We didn't realize his mistake until we were at Safari World. We ended up staying at Safari World because it would take too long to drive to Dreamworld at that point. While we had fun at Safari World, it was a bit of a disappointment.

On the way back from Safari World, Tim asked the driver if he knew how to go home via the expressway. He interpretted her question as an order to take the expressway. Unfortunately, he did not know how to get home via the expressway, but thought that it was better that he kept that to himself. I'm not sure if he thought that we might not notice that he was driving around lost for twenty or thirty minutes, but after the second or third time passing the same building, even I knew we were driving in circles.

Tim showed extreme generosity after one of his mistakes. When she works really late, Tim will usually give him some money to take a taxi home since the bus can take a long time. After one such day, he was distraught when he told Tim that he had given the cab driver a 1,000 (~$30)baht note instead of 100 baht. A thousand baht represents about half a week's salary for him. Tim gave him the 1,000 baht to be kind.

The thing that really annoyed me most about our current driver was a few weeks back when I had a doctor's appointment at 7:00 p.m. On most days, the driver takes Tim to work, then returns to the house in case we need to go somewhere. He is not supposed to leave without letting me know first. I went downstairs at 6:00 p.m. to leave, and he was gone. I missed my appointment. Turns out he told the maid at 4:30 that we was leaving and drove back to Tim's work. While I wasn't pleased with the maid for not telling me, I was really unhappy with the driver. A few days later, after driving somewhere in the afternoon, he asked if he could go back to Tim's office right then. I told him he could leave at 5:00 p.m.

I don't understand it. Its not like he gets home earlier if he leaves here early. He drives back to Tim's office and waits for her there. She usually doesn't leave until almost 9:00 p.m. He ends angering Tim and I, his employer, for not perceivable benefit to himself.

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