[Author’s note 2016-02-28: Another rare picture this is the newest taxi in my fleet, the green 1976 Dodge Dart behind the lady at the center. The car is not yet painted, you can see the body patches. The yellow posts are colonnades on a downtown hotel. In the background is the Orinoco. The second story of this hotel is a balcony restaurant where I did the daily books over coffee. I suppose that is Ivan driving the car.
There is no dispatch system, the cars cruise this avenue, a sort of main street along the riverfront, waiting to be flagged for a fare. Pay attention to those yellow columns, for if I recall correctly, I have an interesting closeup in the batch of pictures I am still sifting through.
This picture was taken around a year earlier, in March 2000. It is entirely possible these pictures have appeared elsewhere in this blog. There is no picture index kept, as this blog is primarily prose.]
Milestones. I put OT-1 and -2 on the new coding system. Actually, make that OT-1. They aren’t ready for such power at OT-2. It is one deadly system for extracting data. I wonder if HQ [even] really comprehends what can be donw. Anyway, I’m writing a disclaimer for my part, just in cas. Irony, Andres has more powerful information than the head office—but he is totally reliant on me to produce it. Every other labor report excepting those based on opinion are instantly obsolete. It will categorize absenteeism by type of labor.
As a break, we played Club M for a share of the sales. It is a nice atmosphere but the owner seems unstable and unable to focus. Live entertainment usually means watch if you’re getting your value.
[Author’s note 2016-02-28: The original is scribbly, but these are two jobsites, Ocean Towers One and Two, that came under my payroll reporting jurisdiction. This was the new reporting system I was leery of because it provided upper management information at site level. I was right that it resulted in all kinds of bad decisions by supervisors and others not really trained to assimilate this kind of detail.
In the end, they had to haul me into the main office to sort out the reporting process. It was bound to cause arguments at the site level, I had never designed it to be used as a payroll reporting system, it just happens to be superb for that. But it also allowed offshoots, like a project manager of two sites to compare them and choose which one made him look the best.
The gig at Club M was one of the last times I played for the Hippie on a commission basis. He kept fancying himself good enough to decree what music the crowd was supposed to like. This consistently killed any chances of making good tips. I had not yet learned to sing, so I went along with this nonsense. I think "getting your value" was directed at the club manager, not the band.]
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