By Nicholas Pipe
What do you do for a bit of coin? Scan groceries, perhaps? Deliver pizzas? Answer phone calls? In the encyclopaedia of casual work, there aren’t many things which stand out. But what about driving prostitutes? Well, that’s how far Jack (not his real name) went to support himself.
Having spent most of his recent years doing typical retail and hospitality work, Jack became frustrated with the lack of shifts at his regular job. And along came a family friend with a new career opportunity.
“He was going away for a few weeks, and wanted to know if I fancied earning some easy money doing some ‘driving’ work,” Jack said. “I was pretty broke at the time…I’ll admit I was more thinking of the money before I accepted the offer, I had a lot of free time to kill and thought why not?
“I tried to ignore the nature of the work. From what I was told I’d spend most of my time just sitting around, or driving to and from places, which isn’t hard.”
However, the hours involved in Jack’s new job – and the sheer monotony of them – were a different story. Frankly, they make nightfilling at your local supermarket look like an evening yoga class.
“A typical weekday shift would be 6pm-2am, but you’d be required to pick people up to get them to work on time, which could easily mean leaving 3 hours earlier,” Jack explained. “Most days would really end up being easily 12 hours long.”
He did that four nights a week. And weekend shifts put paid to Jack’s social life; Fridays and Saturdays ran until 6am. Jack’s maiden shift wasn’t so predictable though, thanks to a visit from the vice squad.
“I had no idea there was a police unit which would actually go around checking these places to ensure people were being treated right, so I thought it was a surprise raid,” he said. “Luckily it wasn’t anything serious and nothing happened.”
Sometimes Jack would also attract police patrols while waiting in car parks between jobs, but he never had a “bad encounter” with the law. In fact, whenever he wasn’t driving, Jack spent his time waiting.
“I’d stay in a secluded lounge room where the receptionist worked, mostly playing around on one of the laptops or occasionally playing Uno with a few people,” he said. “Though a lot of people wouldn’t think it, most of the time the job was really pretty boring. I definitely enjoyed getting big wads of cash every night though!”
I asked Jack if he could recall any awkward moments; he immediately described “the whole experience” as one.
“Sometimes I’d come back to reality and realise where I was, and what I was actually doing or who I was actually talking to, and feel pretty put off…there were moments I’d feel uncomfortable or angry,” Jack said. “I think the moment I was most annoyed was whilst dropping a receptionist home – she decided to start lighting up joints when there was a police breathalyser check up ahead.”
One particular colleague got up Jack’s nose on a regular basis. “There was a worker who lived in a house full of cats – I knew this because whenever I picked her up she stank the car out with the stench of cat piss, to the point where I had to casually crank the window down on a three degree night,” he said. “I’d wince whenever she wanted to use the bloody heater because the car would be humming for days and I’d need to leave the doors and windows open when I got home for a while.”
Jack also endured some scarier in-car episodes. “One of the most uncomfortable moments I’ve experienced in my life was dropping a girl home who was completely whacked out on meth,” he recalled. “She was having several conversations with herself at once about how ‘the string isn’t right because her friends from the past wouldn’t be okay without using the right shoes and need to hydrate themselves with Starburst lollies’.”
Overall, though, Jack is happy with how he managed relationships on the job. “I got along with everybody fine with no dramas, thankfully,” he said. “Some of the workers were pretty overfriendly, but not in an awkward or suspicious way, more like an ‘I need friends’ way. I sat quietly and just drove when I was told to, pretty much agreeing with whoever I was with, and whatever was being said…even if it was about the string not being right.”
As soon as his brief but bizarre stint as a driver had fulfilled its financial purpose, Jack left. “I rushed out of it a bit earlier than I was meant to,” he said. And even though he proudly served the world’s oldest profession – can you blame him?
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