Due to not sleeping at night, I've been taking far too many taxis to work lately. Given that that my budget scarcely allows for the delicious peanut butter sandwich and ramen noodle (or Mr. Noodles, as I called it in my university days) regiment that I've been following this month, I really should get my ass out of bed half an hour earlier so that I have time to take the bus. Ah, next week.
It usually costs about 4 dollars to go from my apartment to Barbie Hawgon. I've noticed that each of the 37 taxis I've taken this week had new signs on the backs of the seats with a list of fares presented on them. There was one column which listed what I believed to be the daytime fare, and another which I deduced was the nighttime fare. It's always cost more to take the taxi between midnight and 4am. I thought that perhaps the taxi companies were catching on that it might be a good idea to advertise this. Sometimes I'm wrong.
When the taxi pulled up in front of Barbie Hagwon, the meter read 3800 won. I was pleased to see that he was 500 won faster than the guy I had the day before. I was less pleased when he threw one of the fare advertisements in my face and asked me to pay 4700 won, instead of 3800. I immediately started griping at him about how he was making me pay more because he thought I was too stupid to understand that he was actually ripping me off by charging me the nighttime fare. Nobody had been charging me the fare in the second column all week long, so clearly this guy was just an asshole. All of this griping was done in English, of course, rendering it useless. Frustrated, I paid the guy the inflated fare and slammed the door behind me.
Later that day while waiting for my eye glasses (25 dollars for corrective lenses. Win!), a thought dawned on me. I turned to my coworker, who had joined the glasses excursion, and asked what the deal was with the new fare signs I'd been seeing in taxis. She lamented that the fares had officially gone up today, but that it could take a while for the meters to reflect this. We both made sad faces over the taxis being more expensive, and I neglected to mention to her The Incident from earlier that day.
In hindsight, it was fairly obvious that the new fare signs were just that: new fare signs! But, sometimes I'm wrong. The reason that I may be a raging bigot doesn't stem from my being an idiot and failing to notice the obvious; that's a whole other issue. The reason that I may be a raging bigot is that instead of considering that my original assumption - that the signs were listing preexisting daytime and nighttime fares - was wrong, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that the evil taxi driver was trying to scam money out of me, on account of my porcelain complexion. Rather than consider the obvious, I assumed the worst.
Then again, it's possible that I just think everybody is trying to rip me off. Really, would I be wrong?
3 comments:
Or maybe your just another ignorant foreigner that doesn't speak the language and goes into a rage because you're overly stressed by culture fatigue.
Maybe. I have kind of started to look like the rest of them, too.
But really, I think that I just have a short-fuse and act like a prick from time to time. As much as I'd love to grip onto the excuse of "culture fatigue", Korea didn't make me the way that I am. And on that note, you gave me an idea for another rant... thanks.
That sucks about the fares.
Hon... I love your combination of cynicism and honest self-reflection. This post is fabulous. Really let's do get together before your sojourn back to America's Hat (aka Canada).
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