Get Your Own Damn Bags!

Today, my airplane landed at Dublin Airport early. I got my bags from the carousel and got out to meet the hotel shuttle at 8:20am. Problem is: The shuttle picks up 8:15am. The next pickup was at 8:45am.

Since my plane landed early, I had the opportunity to make it to a 9:00am meeting on time if I caught a cab. I'd never gotten a cab from the airport to an airport hotel. It seemed like bad form. I know that the cab drivers sit in queue for hours on end just to get an airport fare.

So I get into the cab and as soon as I say "Crowne Plaza - Santry" I can see the cab driver visibly deflate. He'd been waiting in queue for two and a half hours and all he gets is a 10 Euro (roughly $14) fare. He asked me if I could tell the porter that I was going to Blue Car Park. I'm game, so I play along. I don't mind helping a fella out (and I feel guilty about the short hop fare).

The driver rolls down his window and tells the porter that I'm going to the Blue Car Park. The porter turns to me as says "Where are you going, sir?" I say, "The Blue Car Park."

The porter then asks me "Where is that?" I had no clue, so I sat there with the deer-in-headlights look of befuddlement. "Santry?" I answer. That was apparently the wrong answer.

This leads the driver to get into an argument with the porter over where I'm going. During this argument, I discovered that if a taxi fare doesn't leave airport grounds, he can get right back into the queue. I draw the conclusion that the Blue Car Park is on airport grounds. However, the porter seems too wiley for me (I'm sure he's heard it before) and I didn't want to get into any trouble in a foreign country. Have I ever mentioned that I'm a bad liar? Well, I think I just did.

The next time the porter asks me where I'm going, I look at my feet and say, "Crowne Plaza Northwood Santry." The cab driver pulls away, pissed off. I reassure him that I'll give him a good tip and let him know how profoundly sorry I am for the short trip. I explained to him that I needed to be at a meeting at 9:00am and wouldn't have taken a cab if I hadn't absolutely needed to. That seemed to mellow him a bit (though he was still visibly upset).

When we get to the hotel, I give him 15 Euro on a 9 Euro fare. He gets out of the cab and helps me with my bags. This is apparently significant. I talked to another one of our employees today who got in the night before and took a taxi from the airport to the hotel. She did not tip the driver (tipping cab drivers in Dublin isn't a common practice but is very appreciated by the cabbies). Her driver told her that she could get her own bags out of the trunk.

So that makes me wonder if this is a common practice for cabbies - if you piss them off, you get your own bags. On my trip to O'Hare (yesterday), the cab driver didn't help me with my bags. I tipped $3 on a $17 fare. Having made this trip many times before, this is the first time I've had to get my own bags on the same fare/tip. Perhaps he was looking for a bigger tip because he had given me an extra blank receipt (a shady but often practiced ritual in the US).