Taxi!

I used to see taxi journeys as a necessary evil and remain silent, hoping that drivers wouldn’t burden me  me with their crazy opinions about current events. The more I travel, however, the more I am now fascinated by taxis and see the drivers as a rich source of information.

To start with, it is interesting to just look at different taxis in different countries.

The design and layout are windows to the culture of the place. The London Black Cab is, of course, famous; the screen between the driver and the passengers reflects a British concern for privacy and discretion; the seats facing each other encourage conversation. Last Christmas, I was thinking about this when I was in a London cab and then noticed a strange contradiction: this cultivation and homely Christmas decorations and then the more threatening and ominous signs saying "Kindly keep your feet off the seats" and "CCTV surveillance".

In some places, you are encouraged to sit next to the driver, while in others you sit in the back. Maybe this reflects the key cultural dimension of "power distance". In Shanghai, some taxis have recorded messages to welcome you. In Beijing, the drivers wear woolly gloves — even when temperatures go over 30°C.

In rural Suffolk in England, I once noticed a plastic sheet in the back of a taxi — the driver told me that he kept it there as he frequently drove expecting mothers to the hospital — and they had been known to give birth in the car.

A comment about the amount of traffic in Brussels during the recent European summit meeting led a taxi driver to launch into a tirade about the protesting farmers who were blocking the roads. "It means that we can’t use this opportunity to demonstrate, as the police say it would be too disruptive to have two demonstrations," he said. When I asked him what he meant by "we" he said that he was from Iran and then launched into a highly emotional personal story of the struggles of the Iranian opposition.

Some years ago, my taxi driver to Munich airport turned out to be someone who had had a contract with BMW at the time when they bought Rover. He frequently drove German and British managers and engineers and their partners to the airport on the way to or from the British Midlands. He told me some fascinating stories about the cultural issues they experienced and the advice he gave them. Shortly before we arrived he asked me what I did. I replied: "I think I have a similar job to yours. The only difference is that I don’t do it in a taxi."

Maybe this all confirms what is suggested in the article on socializing across cultures in the current issue of Business Spotlight: small talk can pay off.