Taxi Taxi Taxi

So I realise it's three weeks since I last updated anything here, so here goes.

A couple of Wednesdays back, I woke up when an unexpected SMS came in the morning. I was to go for an interview at SGH later that afternoon for some admin position. I took a look at the SMS.

It was an urgent call for somebody to fill in this certain position at Clarke Quay. Working hours seemed long, but it paid $1400. So I thought, why the heck not. I expressed interest and just a half hour later I was on a train to Clarke Quay.

I had minimal trouble finding the place. It was just above the station itself. It did take a while before I met my supervisor. He explained the job to me, and it seemed pretty simple to me. Actually, it was. The bad things about the job were really the hours and the huge luck factor.

Allow me to explain.

The hours of the job is 11am to 10pm. Although most of the time is spent slacking around and watching TV shows on the laptop provided, it is really the most screwed up timing one can get. It's exactly when shops open until after they close. Which means there's zero time to do anything during the weekdays, except going to pubs or whatnot on Friday nights.

This means my weekends have at least tripled in value. Anything that I intend to do that only can be done between 10am to 11pm have to be put into the weekends. This includes shopping for miscellaneous items, or sleep, or play with the 360 I temporarily swapped with my Wii for.

Now the luck factor I mentioned. This job requires me to get taxis for anybody who wants them. I sit just beside the taxi stand so it should be easy right? No. Due to some blockage in the brain by the mall's designer, the taxi stand has been placed in the basement. Lack of signs and having the entrance to the basement right at the end of a single-lane U-turn road causes taxis to be so rare only about five actually come in on their own in a day. And sometimes they come in because the driver wanted to use the toilet (conveniently placed within 2o steps of my location).

I end up telling most people who wait there to either go to the Hotel across the road, or call for one. Sometimes I try to get the security guard upstairs (if there is one stationed there at all) to get one down for me, and sometimes I don't get any response so it just makes my job very hard.

On my second day it rained during the peak hour and some of the customers ended up waiting up to an hour for their cabs. And it was only for the ones I called too. It always seems that the ones I call are the ones who either can't find their way here or took a wrong turn somewhere and gave up.

Speaking of poor design, I suspect my job was actually due to it. Now the mall was divided into two, with the retail outlets on one side and restaurants on another. They were split and accessed each other through a single lane through the middle that, on the shop side, was so inconspicuous it looks like just another shop

The escalators were mainly at the restaurant area (called The Atrium), and they were all over the place. The one leading to level 2 was half hidden in the back, The one to level 3 in the middle, level 2 to 3 at the side and another one down to the basement that led to nowhere.

In the basement, I sit beside the taxi stand, which is also just under the B1 to 1 escalator. Despite this many people still ask me how to go up and where the nearest escalator was. Remember the toilet being 20 steps away from me? People ask me where that is too. The lift is located right in the middle of the level, but some people couldn't find it. The way to the MRT station was just straight down, but like all the others the lack of signs make shoppers go dizzy trying to navigate around.

On Friday I printed up a couple of signs and pasted them on the front of my booth. One was an arrow pointing to the escalator behind me, and one pointing to the toilet 20 steps away to my right. It was working pretty fine, and stayed there through the weekends until Tuesday when a clipboard wielding lady being followed by two men walked past the booth and noticed them. She angrily demanded of me the person responsible for making the two pieces of paper stuck with sticky tape she refers to as "signage". I stuttered and stammered for about 4 seconds before she tore them off abruptly and then told me it wasn't allowed. One of the guys passed the torn pieces of paper to me, and she stormed off, leaving me to remove the sticky tape that were rolled up to simulate double-sided tape.

It left me with two questions in my mind:

- Was my job in danger?
- What was the thing that made her mad, the fact that pasting a couple of pieces of paper that showed directions was gravely violating some regulation, or that in terms doing something like providing simple like directions, a guy with the internet and a printer could be more efficient than a corporation with a multi-million-dollar budget?

It left me with an expression between a frown of fear and a smirk, and I realise now that I should have taken a photo of that expression.

I'll see you in a few more weeks.