I tell customer, write address. I have GPS!

Thursday and Friday I was in Washington DC for a business trip. I blame the following story on waking up at 4:00 AM to catch the outbound flight.

My seat was about 10 rows in front of my boss, Chris. When I got off the plane, I saw that we were right next to the tram to baggage claim, so I got on right away and thought Chris would be right behind me. Well, he was waiting at the gate, thinking I went to the restroom or something. Half an hour and a couple of cell phone calls later, I was waiting at the taxi stand for Chris...while he waited at a different taxi stand for me. But this must have been fate, ensuring that we would meet up at the same moment that a certain cab driver reached the front of the line.

He didn't speak much English, but he asked me to write down the address, and I did. 101 N Columbus Street. As an afterthought I added, Arlington. He swerved in and out of his lane, putting his glasses on to read the GPS screen, taking them off to see the road. He made a couple of wrong turns, but eventually we arrived at 101 N Columbus, about 10 minutes early for our meeting.

The problem was, this was a brick house in a residential neighborhood. Not an office above a pizza parlor, near the metro station, as it had been described to me.

Our driver got on the phone with the dispatcher, and Chris got on the phone with a colleague, and eventually we figured out that we were supposed to be in Alexandria, not Arlington. I sunk lower in my seat as the driver waved the piece of paper in front of my face. "Arling-tone! Ha! I tell customer, write address!" Vindicated, he proceeded straight through a left-turn lane, took a few more wrong turns, stopped in the middle of a busy street to look at his map, and drove right up onto the sidewalk to deliver us to 101 N Columbus, ALEXANDRIA.