Check Day

Ask any cab driver in the city what their favorite day of the month is, and they'll tell you it's the day the post office delivers the monthly checks.

There's a whole bunch of people in the city who call a cab the minute the letter carrier delivers that check. First, they go to the bank to cash the check while we wait. Then they go to all sorts of other places after that.

Some go directly to the package store. Others go to the drugstore. Others make a bunch of bill-paying stops. The diversity of the errands is enough to fill the page.

As soon as the checks are delivered, it's one pickup after another with these "check runs." You can see the cabs running all over the city, straight out, and it's something that, if you're not driving a cab (or dispatching) when it happens, you'd never know it was happening at all.

But this is a regular monthly event.

Although the meter amounts build up after going from place to place and waiting at each one, it's the generosity of customers who are flush with cash that really makes this one day out of each month such a joy for a cabbie.

Tips are often quite large.

The rest of the month, tips are pretty much a thing of some bygone era. Although, when a customer's had a few too many brewskies or shots, the large tip is always a joy to behold.

It didn't happen today, but I've had monthly check runs make the meter sing into the 50 to 90 dollar range on some occasions. And that's just running around within a small half mile to two mile radius for an hour or so.

This was the largest total my meter hit today, though.

And now it's back to normal for the rest of the month.

We start off with a big bang every month, and then it's a thirty day downhill slide as the money slowly runs out.

The thing about this day that I always find interesting is that when someone who normally doesn't carry around any significant amount of cash suddenly has hundreds of dollars in their possession, there's a sense of generosity that makes them genuinely feel good. Being able to "spend large," even if it's only for a few hours on one day of the month, puts a big smile on a lot of people's faces in this city.