Sunday, December 04, 2005

Driver dilemma

I forgot to mention something in my last post. I figured this deserved a post of its own though. While we were in Shanghai our driver decided to drive our van. Now it isn't really our van, it belongs to the company our driver works for, but nonetheless, it isn't his van either. When he picked us up from the airport he was sporting a baseball hat, which I thought was quite strange. When I got closer to him I noticed that he had a huge bandage on his forehead and he took us to the van that just happened to belong to Jonny's boss. While we were out of town Joseph decided to take the van to his parents for dinner. On the way to his parent's home a bicycle jumped out in front of him, which is very common here, and he swerved to miss the bicycle and ran into a cement block. We understood that it most likely wasn't his fault because there are several million bikes in this city and they think they own the road, so we didn't think a thing of it. That is until Joseph started sending other drivers to pick us up. We couldn't really get a straight answer out of him on why he wasn't able to drive for us and why we had several different driver in several different vans. Finally we decided to speak with Joseph's boss.

Jonny spoke to his boss and he told him that Joseph drove the van without permission and had his parent's in the van. His father had to go to the hospital with a broken shoulder and put 30,000 RMB (almost $4,000) worth of damage to the van. So that is the real story. We were a little taken a back that Joseph failed to give us all the details. So since finding out the real truth of the situation we have had 5 different vans, the last one smells of cigarette smoke and someone used the cup holders as ashtrays, his dad has had 2 surgeries on his shoulder and we still don't have our van back. Joseph has also lost all confidence in his driving and some of his habits are starting to get to us. Like for instance, he doesn't have good oral hygiene. I don't think the man has ever used a toothbrush and the smell of his breath is unbearable. Jonny has said he was going to talk to him about it, but how do you tell someone that their breath is horrible? We are considering finding a new driver, but we are really torn. He really knows the city, not geographically necessarily, but if you need something he knows the best place to find it. I think we will give it another week and if things don't improve we will start to look for another driver. Oh how I wish I had my Honda Odyssey here with me, sigh!!!

1 comment:

VeryApeAZ said...

Buy him a toothbrush, dental floss, tooth paste and mouthwash for Christmas. That's a not so subtle hint.