I used to work for an old school traditional taxi service. Back in 2003-2007. Back before these services took over. I had a personal issue with my employer, and so I left that company. I knew everything there was to know about the office side of taxi dispatching. I was going to find something else for the moment (which happened to be a laundromat attendent, as well as a hotel front desk manager), but in a different comany, run by different people, I could have become office manager of a taxi business.
Then uber and lyft came in.
They set their fares at unreasonably cheap rates. They made no profit for the first 8 years. They made the customers get used to the idea of fares being so low, just to drive the other traditional companies out of business. But here's the thing. They were bleeding money, that they made up for with other investments. A taxi company is in no other investing business. So it worked. All the other taxi companies in my area went out of business. Except for the one I used to work at, because they secured private contracts with the airport and schools. Other than that one company, 8 other taxi companies died.
Then, when everybody else was dead, Uber and Lyft raised rates DRASTICALLY in our area. We have a small suburb in Cleveland, named Lakewood. It's basically the shape of a rectangle. About 4 miles east to west, and 2 miles north to south. You could go anywhere in Lakewood, for $4.50 when I worked for the Taxi company. It's generally about 10 minutes one side to the other unless traffic backs up. I've seen those fares are now $12.75 before tip, and the drivers only really make money from the tips. There are 2 main roads in lakewood, both going east to west. Detroit is the more main of the roads, it has the number 26 bus that runs it's entire length. The other main road is Madison. The number 25 bus runs it's full length as well. You can either get an all day pass for 5 dollars, which gives you unlimited rides on any bus throughout the entire Cleveland bus system (RTA), or you can pay $2.50 per ride. No matter which bus you take, anywhere else in Lakewood is a short walk from where you got off at your stop. Less then a 2 minute walk I'd say. Even walking north to south, Detroit to Madison is a 5 minute walk. So you could even take the wrong bus, get off paralell to where you'd get off on the other bus, and still only walk 7-10 minutes.
So you can see how this would scale when you apply it to all of north east ohio. That same $5 bus pass will take you about 40 miles one end of RTA to the other. Our old taxi rates would have been in the neighborhood of $40-60. Depending on point A and point B's distance. Uber I've heard will charge $200 for that same distance. When they first came to town, they were charging $10. Just to drive taxi's out of business.
When I worked at the taxi company, you knew the drivers. It really felt like a TV show some days. You knew what certain people were going to do, what certain people were going to say, before they even walked through the door. During the bar rush (busiest time of the week for taxi's), they'd collectively fight the other taxi's trying to steal our orders, however if the customer called BOTH companies, BOTH companies would collectively leave his ass on the curb for intentionally wasting one of the drivers time. There wasn't full unity between competing companies drivers, but there was an understanding that they work together on some things. A taxi driver knew the city. A taxi driver knew the events. A taxi driver got a sense of who the passengers were by reading body language before they even said a word, and was prepared for trouble before it came.
These Uber/Lyft drivers are none of that.
"Take me to (insert the most well known street in your city)" "Ok, where is that?"
or "I'm going to (insert really well known concert venue)" "Yeah, I'm going to need an address".
I don't know if this is still true, but when I was working as dispatch, I would hear about how in London you couldn't even work at a taxi company, driver or dispatcher unless you passed a test of the local street knowledge, and local landmarks. You needed to know where every street in the city was, within 45 seconds of being asked, or you fail. I always thought that was pretty neat. Knowledgeable professional drivers.
Now you get into these Ubers, and the guy is like "Yo, bro, ya mind if I vape???". Zero knowledge of the city. Most of them only doing it one day a week. Despite having a preset price, they take the most random longest routes, because they rely on GPS.
So Uber and Lyft have tried to basically manipulate the system for an outcome that benefits their own corporate interests only. They don't give a shit about the drivers. The drivers don't even know each other. There's no sense of unity or pride like we had. It's all lowest common denominator bullshit, except for the price gouging, 90% of which goes straight to corporate.
So now the customer pays far more, to get a lesser quality driver, and the ride will take longer because the driver doesn't know what they're doing, and the drivers aren't getting compensated enough to make this an actual job.
I just wasn't prepared for this cow trotting over slowly at first, and then into a full run as she realized what happened. Then finally nuzzling the end of her mouth into the area under the victim cows head. Like she was trying to lift it.
It was like she was saying "Phil? What was that noise? Phil? Phil??? PHIL!!!! OH GOD NO!!!! PHIIIIIILLLLLL!!!!! NO! NO! NO! NO! PHIL TALK TO ME!!!!"
And now you're saying that's basically what did happen.
I once saw a video of a dashcam. This guy is driving out in the farmlands, but the roads were twisty like a pretzal made by a drunk guy. And this driver is a real piece of shit. He's doing like 70 down a twisty road that he can't see the next turns sometimes. Well he takes this turn real hard at 70, but immediately after the turn, the road turns the OPPOSITE direction almost immediately. At those speeds, and with those hills, his car goes flying over a fence, into a private farm, lands just before a cow, but the momentum carried his car into hitting the cow. I checked the frame by frame gps display. He hit the cow still at 50mph even after hitting the ground first.
This cow goes down HARD. He let out this little whimper noise. The description said the driver died. I ASSUME the hit cow died. But right after it happened, this one cow comes trotting over. Kinda slowly at first, and then with great emergency once it kind of grasped what had just happened. Then she starts moo'ing like crazy, and suddenly dozens of angry cows come running over the hill. They all surrounded the hit cow, and the first cow is just nuzzling it's head with her own head. I know it sounds crazy, but I swear the emotion there was like the first cow was trying to wake up the hit cow. Then this herd of cows starts angrily mooing at the car. I swear it was like they understood that the car was at fault, and they were pissed. They started running at the car, bashing it with their bodies. The guy inside, was either already dead, or died later with EMS. I'm not sure which.
I just know it was like these cows were a community, mourning the dead, and angry at the killer. And they were COWS!!!
And while not explicitly stated in those exact terms, that's probably EXACTLY what this sign is for. But they probably cover their legal bases if they say sll dogs, in case a non-service dog bites them. Then the airport has a sign "What did we JUST say???"
I work at a different airport, and while I can't say I've ever seen a dog attack someone, I CAN say I've seen people get so drunk that they take off all their clothes at the bar. Then get arrested for "singing kareoke onstage". Except there's a few key pieces of information. First off, they had no stage. She was just naked singing while standing on top of the bar. Like it was coyote ugly. Also, the bar didn't have a kareoke machine, it had a keno display. And there wasn't even any music playing. She just got up on the bar naked and starts a drunk rendition of "allstar" followed by most of "walking on the sun" by smash mouth before the cops showed up and arrested her. Bonus points to the cops for letting her get off the bartop on her own. She used a bar chair to get down, and the top of the chair swivels. So she fucks it up, the chair swivels, and she eats the ground HARD. Like.....pretty sure she had a concussion after that. She was definately bleeding from the back of her head. As someone who has a lot of downtime, and just people watches, that was definately my favorite day for people watching.
Entertaining story aside, my point is.....people are dumbasses. She never got to the point to even try to board the plane, but I assure you, she would have been denied. And she's not alone. Most people keep their clothes on, but a LOT of people (looking at you, spirit, and frontier passengers) drink WAAAAAAAY too much.
So I could fully see a situation where a drunk guy insists on petting a dog that doesn't want to be touched by a drunk guy. I could then understand why a dog would then bite him. And now we understand this sign.
Annoying how? Like are they going to come over, and borrow my lawn mower, but then not return it for a week and half because it was too much effort to bring it back?
Wait.....no, that's my neighbor. Is my neighbor a human sized wasp?