I am currently a taxi driver in a small town in northern Sweden. Its a very competitive job: At an given time, there are maybe 100 or so cabs out from a number of different brands, but only 50 or so customers. The number of customers does of course change sporadically, but its hard to predict in any detail. When someone calls the taxi-number (911 911 in our case :)), they come to the telephone-exchange, who sends out a message to a small computer terminal in the cab that happens to be closest. This encourages drivers with no customer to position themselves strategically; which is good, both for the customer and the company. But; when a customer calls ahead of time, that customers address and preferred departure time is shown on the terminal: this so that drivers can know ahead of time if there is a rush anytime soon, and if you drop of a customer some distance out of town, you can check to see if there happens to be some job for you out here if you just stick around for a while, so you don’t drive halfway and then have to turn back. One consequence of this however (and here is the point) is that on calm days with few customers, if there pops up a job in the terminal 30 kilometers out of town, a whole bunch of drivers are going to race out there in order to be closest when it’s released. This is bad for the company (drivers angry at each other, extra fuel costs, etc), and bad for the customer (s/he would have had a cab sent from downtown with time to spare anyway, and all this only drives the prices up), not to mention stressful and dangerous for the drivers, and all for no net benefit; it does not generate more customers, it only distributes the ones that already called.
And here the same pattern appears: If I think that is silly, stupid, and un-eco-friendly, and decide to not engage in that sort of thing, I won’t get as many customers; so I’m forced to compete.
This of course stems from there being to many cars out to begin with, but here the same problem arises: If my boss didn’t send out as many cars when he new there weren’t a lot of customers, he wouldn’t get ANY of them.
OT:
This is my first post here, have read a lot of posts over the last year or so, and have finally decided to read all posts in chronological order. I’d also like to note that English is not my first language.
I am currently a taxi driver in a small town in northern Sweden. Its a very competitive job: At an given time, there are maybe 100 or so cabs out from a number of different brands, but only 50 or so customers. The number of customers does of course change sporadically, but its hard to predict in any detail. When someone calls the taxi-number (911 911 in our case :)), they come to the telephone-exchange, who sends out a message to a small computer terminal in the cab that happens to be closest. This encourages drivers with no customer to position themselves strategically; which is good, both for the customer and the company. But; when a customer calls ahead of time, that customers address and preferred departure time is shown on the terminal: this so that drivers can know ahead of time if there is a rush anytime soon, and if you drop of a customer some distance out of town, you can check to see if there happens to be some job for you out here if you just stick around for a while, so you don’t drive halfway and then have to turn back. One consequence of this however (and here is the point) is that on calm days with few customers, if there pops up a job in the terminal 30 kilometers out of town, a whole bunch of drivers are going to race out there in order to be closest when it’s released. This is bad for the company (drivers angry at each other, extra fuel costs, etc), and bad for the customer (s/he would have had a cab sent from downtown with time to spare anyway, and all this only drives the prices up), not to mention stressful and dangerous for the drivers, and all for no net benefit; it does not generate more customers, it only distributes the ones that already called. And here the same pattern appears: If I think that is silly, stupid, and un-eco-friendly, and decide to not engage in that sort of thing, I won’t get as many customers; so I’m forced to compete. This of course stems from there being to many cars out to begin with, but here the same problem arises: If my boss didn’t send out as many cars when he new there weren’t a lot of customers, he wouldn’t get ANY of them.
OT: This is my first post here, have read a lot of posts over the last year or so, and have finally decided to read all posts in chronological order. I’d also like to note that English is not my first language.
Hi all! waves hand