Monday, June 25, 2007

It happened again …

Sometime I wonder about the habits people caught with. It happened to me again in the near past. A perfect start of the day the weather was awesome and made me spare more sleep time then usual and guess what I missed my bus to office. Knowing I can find plenty of BMTC buses for the 14 Kms journey to my work place waited in a very relaxed mood at a bus stop. After seeing all those over crowded buses I started counting the time, still getting late to my workplace. Finally I got into a bus which has some space to seat and got down at the last stop which is 3 Kms away from my work place.

I was already an hour late and not in mode to wait further, searched around if I could find some auto and here it goes the whole story

Me : Auto, ITPL chal raheho ?

1st Autowala : Sir, double meter otherwise I will not go ….. wooooooooooooossss …

2nd Autowala : Sir, double meter otherwise I will not go ….. wooooooooooooossss …

3rd Autowala : Sir, 50/- rupees otherwise I will not go ….. wooooooooooooossss …

4th Autowala: Sir, 10/- rupees extra dena hoga (after negotiating)… wooosssssssss…….

For all of them my answer was nope, meter pe chalo, extra kyon ??

I started wondering what’s wrong with these guys it’s hardly far away and they don’t feel ashamed of asking money well above one can imagine. As far as I know the meter auto fetches only 15/- rupees. I looked around myself just to check whether am I looking like a foreigner to them !!! I know this is a common problem faced by many if you don’t know the local language, and surprisingly I found my office tag on my shirt which I normally don’t put while using public transport. My wild guess, these guys are getting smarter and they know from whom they can suck extra money.

And there I clicked with one Idea, removed the tag and called the 5th Autowala and you guessed it right he puts the meter down without asking or demanding anything extra and finally reached office.

3 comments:

anil i said...

bhai!, I understand how that can be, being a localite i've experienced the same.Here's my 2 cents. and this exactly what i believe in.
You sweat out day in and day out to earn money.
it really does not matter if your a localite or not, NEVER pay extra to a auto guy, never pay the traffic cop, ask for bill everywhere..!! it's your right!!

cheers
Anil
Pulse-beat.blogspot.com

Test said...

This is perfectly correct, I have found Autowala of Bangalore are the WORST.. they are so hungry about money, that sometimes I feel like they will never get satisfied. The worst thing after Traffic in bangalore is..... Yes, you guess it right, they are freaking autowalas.. never reliable..

Anonymous said...

I know what you must have felt - I face it day in and day out....Its really challenging to get an auto at the genuine charges in the city forget about places like ITPL - we cant help the situation much untill we buy our own car but the problem is where to drive the damn thing???? No places on roads.....