‘Pasaway’ passengers

After the COVID paranoia and fear of taking public transport, I have once again rediscovered the benefits of riding or taking Grab Car rides.

Considering the fact that the distances I travel are short, I don’t have to pay a fortune for a worry-free commute. Driving your own car in the metro is no longer as convenient as it used to be. Traffic has greatly increased, resulting in greater stress to drivers. Paying a small fortune for fuel and excessive parking rates is a serious consideration and there is no guarantee that you can find parking all the time. In fact, I know people who check in advance how challenging parking is where they are headed.

Of course, there are times and places where getting a Grab car can be a challenge, so I simply try to work out my meetings and schedules outside of the rush hour and certain business districts. Aside from the convenience, conversations with Grab drivers can be very educational in terms of social and class dynamics between passenger and drivers.

Whenever I ride a Grab car, my first question is if the driver is just “driving the unit” or if the driver owns the unit. Many passengers mistakenly assume that the guy behind the wheel is “just a driver.” More than half of the time, I discover that today’s Grab drivers are actually unit owners who are paying off a car loan while earning a living as a Grab driver.

A number of them are highly educated, college graduates who simply wanted to be their own boss, others are older head of the family who has to bring a wife to work or a child to school. A few actually ended up deciding to get a car to drive their daughter to work and earn a living in between.

In the course of these chats or impromptu interviews, I learned that being a Grab driver is not always easy. On bad days, they could end up with the “pasaway pasahero” or the passenger from hell who makes a booking and then cancels the very minute the driver is at the pick-up point.

Then there are the backseat drivers who rudely tell the driver how to drive, where to pass or how fast to drive, without considering the fact that outside of the vehicle there are also the traffic enforcer from hell looking for their next victim. One Grab driver shared how a passenger apparently left the house late and harassed and threatened the driver to “fly” or speed up because the passenger might not make it to the flight.

When I asked if he reported the passenger to Grab management, the driver said they were not allowed to complain about rude passengers or answer back. They were expected to suffer in silence. I have heard this several times from different Grab drivers and this is unacceptable. Sorry, Grab management, but you have a responsibility to protect your partners in the business from being mistreated or threatened by rude and uneducated passengers.

If there are so-called passenger rights for travelers and riders, there should also be Driver’s Rights and protection. Pasaway passengers should be blacklisted by Grab after two or three complaints from drivers.

Back when I was in the resort development business, there would be the rare case of guests from hell who were under the impression that because they paid for their stay in a resort, they had the right to demand things and express their displeasure at the resort staff. Like flies on the back of a carabao, they thought they were big shots or acted like they owned the place.

When I got a chance to compare notes with other resort operators, I learned how resort GMs would sit down the offensive guests, explain to them that the money they paid bought them the privilege to be treated as guests of the resort but not create a scene or harass the staff. If, however, they preferred to be elsewhere, a boat has been made ready to transfer them out of the resort within the hour. Believe it or not, those guests suddenly behaved and often turned out to be people who did not know how to turn off their “attack mode.”

I do hope that Grab management will introduce a reporting system, even a video recording system like that used by complaint or call centers that drivers of Grab can turn on when drivers are being verbally abused or threatened. From there, the customer can be advised about several reports filed by drivers or the pasaway passenger can simply be refused enrollment in the program. Just airing the side of drivers who, like many of us, are educated, self-employed and well-mannered persons and not nobodies!

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One of the pronouncements made by President Bongbong Marcos after assuming office was that he would right-size the bureaucracy for purposes of streamlining and efficiency. If we can count on PBBM to keep his promise or pronouncement, may we suggest that the President assign some staff members to study the cloning or functions and powers in the national government.

Last week, our senior columnist Jarius Bondoc wrote about how a Dutch ship was ripped off with a half a million-peso bill for tugboat towing lasting 60 minutes total. Jarius pointed out that the bill, if levied by the Philippine Ports Authority, should have only been a few hundred dollars but because the Bases Conversion Development Authority gave the Poro Point Management Corp. the right to make up its own pricing structure, we now have a minor agency cloning the authority of the national agency.

At the MIAA, we have the Airport Police cloning the authority of the Philippine National Police, and let’s not forget the conflict in issuing different visas under the PEZA – to the chagrin of the Bureau of Immigration. Nobody likes copy-cats!

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