The Taxi Driver
January, 2018 Dubai “You are a really good customer Ma’am”, he said to my friend. It was an unexpected comment from a taxi driver and we are both surprised. I asked him why he thought my friend was a good customer. He said, “Ma’am, some customers get very angry if I don’t know the exact location of their destination. They say, ‘what kind of a taxi driver are you? It’s your job to know where this location is.’ Sometimes they give names of stores inside malls and expect us to know exactly where it is. I don’t know the exact place your friend wants to go to, Ma’am, but when I told her that I don’t know, she said ‘it’s ok, we’ll figure it out once we are near there.’ That’s why I said it.” It struck a chord because I realized yet again that politeness and kindness can affect someone immensely in their everyday lives. We all know how we treat people is something they never tend to forget, and therefore is extremely important, but how often do we try to practice politeness and ki...