stupid cabbie redux

Generally speaking, my experience with Seoul cabbies has been positive, but every once in a while, I end up sitting with some real retards. In fact, I'd say that, among the unpleasant taxi experiences I've had, more of them have been due to retards than to assholes. Today's ride to work began badly when the cabbie suddenly swerved onto a back street that no other cabbie has ever taken. I know the back street because I've walked it dozens upon dozens of times, so I knew it was essentially a time-wasting jug-handle that split from the main street, then looped back to it, serving no other function than to lengthen my ride and earn the cabbie a few more cents. When I told the cabbie we were taking the long way, he grunted that he was trying to beat the traffic light on the main street. I've been in enough cabs to know that this is sometimes a plausible tactic, but I also knew my own neighborhood well enough to know (1) he wasn't going to beat the light, and (2) I was going to end up with a more expensive fare. So we're barely thirty seconds into my ride, and I'm already irritated.

I had told the cabbie to take me toward "Daechi-yeok sageori," i.e., Daechi Station intersection. There also happens to be a better-known intersection known simply as "Daechi sageori" (Daechi Intersection), so a lot of cabbies mishear my request (I'm a foreigner, so I can't know what I'm talking about, right?), and I end up having to ask them to move into the correct lane for "Daechi-yeok sageori" (exaggerated emphasis on the yeok). I did the same with this cabbie, and he complied reluctantly.

Look at the map below (click to enlarge) to follow the rest of this story:

Point A, above, is where we swing north onto Yeongdong Daero, a large street that, if you follow it north, passes by the famous Samseong COEX building (my neighborhood is to the east, off the map). Around Point B, I have to ask my driver to get in the left lane so we can turn left at Hangnyeoul Station Intersection onto Nambu sunhwan-no which, as you see, runs roughly WSW to ENE. My driver complies reluctantly; his dashboard GPS is telling him to go north past the COEX building because he's stupid and has said "Daechi sageori" instead of "Daechi-yeok sageori" into the machine. We successfully turn left onto Nambu sunhwan-no (Point C), then head west. Around Point D, I tell the driver my exact destination: "Ajeossi, I'm going to the Classia Building, which is straight ahead in front of us, so after you cross the big intersection, please drop me at the first traffic light." This is pretty much what I tell every cabbie, and at first, it seems as if this driver has understood me.

But no. We reach Daechi Station Intersection and cross it (Point E), and just as we cross it, the driver asks, "Do I drop you here?" Are you fucking retarded? Was "first traffic light AFTER the fucking intersection" somehow unclear to you? 19 out of 20 cabbies get me when I phrase my directions this way. But there's always that twentieth cabbie, I guess. Seething, I politely tell the cabbie to go to the first traffic light, which is up at Point G.

We reach Point F, about 150 meters short of where I want to get off.

"Stop here?" asks the cabbie.

Instead of exploding, I do the Korean thing and deflect my exasperation by laughing in what I hope sounds like a friendly manner. This guy really is a piece of work.

"Keep going to the FIRST traffic light," I say, laughingly, while wanting to stab a screwdriver into his foramen magnum. The driver eases his way forward, still apparently not grokking where and what a "first traffic light" might be. I finally point ahead and say, "Please drop me at that crosswalk." The crosswalk is visible; the crosswalk is obvious. The traffic light, just above it, apparently is not. The cabbie grunts and somehow makes it to where I want to be dropped off. I thank the driver and, for no reason I can understand, bid him have a good day.

As I said, most cabbies aren't this way, in my experience. Most are just fine, and I have no trouble with them. Some of them, though, are so astoundingly stupid that I wonder how they manage to breathe. By rights, they ought to be drooling in their wheelchairs, staring at nothing, registering nothing, contemplating nothing, comprehending nothing.