The Airport and Taxi Stands

There's one job to and from the airport each day... a person who works there.

I took these pictures a few days ago, when I brought the guy to work in the morning.

I wonder what it's like working in a place where nothing ever happens.

In my wildest imagination, I couldn't come up with a more bizarre scenario than the project of taking a moderately busy airport and turning it into... what? What can we call this?... A mausoleum? Is it actually a "looking forward to the future" exercise in geological terms? When the archeologists of the distant future dig this place up, what will they theorize the purpose of it was? Will they theorize that, like the ancient cliff dwellers of the southwest, the builders of this magnificent structure just suddenly disappeared?

Everything's all set up and ready to go, however. There's parking, there's car rentals, there's places to walk up and buy tickets, there's baggage handling stuff, and there's great security.

AND there's even an officially designated Taxi Stand...

Of all the various places in the city where they could have placed an officially designated cabstand, the first new one to be so designated in decades, this is where they put it. It's most definitely Murphy's Law at work...

There are no stands in front of City Hall. During all the years that the Worcester Center mall was open, they never put a stand there. There are no stands anywhere around Union Station. No stands for any of the hotels, either. What we have to do is stand in places where the police can, should they so desire, chase us out any time the mood strikes them.

There's an official taxi stand on Pleasant Street, just before Newton Square. You could stand there from Sunday morning through Saturday evening and never get a pickup.

There's an official taxi stand on Beacon Street by Sycamore... another completely worthless location.

There's an official taxi stand in front of Hahnemann Hospital, where once or twice a week you might get a pickup that missed the bus.

There's two stands on Front Street. The one at Front and Commercial isn't a bad spot, but only if nobody parks there illegally (which is most often the case). The one at Harrington Corner is only a taxi stand until early in the morning, which makes it basically worthless.

So, at least somebody had the wits to understand that a taxi stand at the airport would make sense. Of course, nothing else about the airport makes any sense at all...