Help! My taxi driver is wearing the wrong trousers
WHAT should a mini-cab / taxi driver wear to put his customers at ease, to assure them that they are in the hands of a professional? To Perth, Australia, then, where a driver is not wearing trousers. Jessie Gravett, 21, hired the cab. She took a photo of the non-trousers:
“There is possibly a legitimate reason for the lack of pants but I would think he would stop driving and be a professional about it. Not pick girls up. I didn’t take much notice of the driver when I got in, just shut the door and confirmed my drop off address in Spearwood, 35 minutes away. I immediately messaged my friends so they could keep tabs on me. I didn’t want to draw attention to his lack of pants because I was unsure how he would react. I was very uncomfortable.
“I put my keys between my fingers and unzipped my sharp studded boots because I wasn’t sure what his intentions were and I wanted to be prepared in case I needed to defend myself.”
Such is the power of trousers.
She complained:
“When I called they [Swan Taxis] said he had someone else in the car already for another job so at least they had track of him.”
We’ve been here before. Anorak goes back to 2006:
“THEY have a more gentle look than jeans, which can look a bit aggressive,” says Jeremy Hackett of corduroy trousers.
Hackett, the founder of the Hackett clothing brand, makes a good point. While we’re unconvinced that jeans are aggressive – especially those dark blue jeans worn by men of a certain age and pulled high over the navel – cords are as gentle as the Dalai Lama in a pair of cashmere mittens.
The one drawback is that they make the wearer look like a geography teacher.
And to those style gurus at train operator One that will not do. As the Telegraph says, the train operator has issued a new dress code at taxi ranks at Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth railway stations in East Anglia. Cords are out. Also verboten are jeans, T-shirts and trainers.
The last three items we can understand. As we’ve already noted, jeans can be aggressive, serving to unnerve the taxi’s passenger. We shudder to think how many drivers have been provoked to acts of road rage by a pair of too-tight Lee jeans cutting off the circulation to their brains.
Trainers are the footwear of lowlifes (see sneakers), and we all know that there is no place in decent society for T-shirts, whether plain or bearing an image of the Pope smoking a refer.
But cords! What have they done to hurt anybody? “It is absolutely ridiculous,” says one driver. “I agree that drivers should look smart and professional – but what is wrong with wearing cords?”
We have no idea. But Jill Casswell, a spokesman for the rail company, is up to speed. Says he:
“Cords were included in the list of unacceptable clothing as they can look quite scruffy when they get faded.”
He’s not wrong. They can. And there’s more. When the guidelines were being clarified, it was noticed that several drivers were wearing light coloured cords which had frayed and looked quite nasty at the knees.
Is there anything worse? The last thing any passenger wants to see when they’ve been stuck on a slow-moving train for an age is a pair of saggy knees.
So from now on, men must wear black trousers and black shoes with a collared shirt or polo shirt. For women, a black skirt and a blouse with a collar is the prescribed livery.
It’s all about standards. It’s all about order. It’s all about giving the taxi drivers something to think about while they await the arrival of the delayed service from Burnham-on-Crouch…
Posted: 17th, August 2012 | In: Strange But True, The Consumer Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
