Many years ago, in the days before Uber and Lyft, I lived in an apartment complex in Campbell, CA. There was a nice Ethiopian family a couple of units over from me. I would often smell the delicious food they were cooking, and they probably smelled the coffee I would roast in my Gene Cafe. I mostly roasted dry process Ethiopian coffees (and still do).
When I had a minor medical procedure scheduled that would require light sedation, I thought to myself, "I need a way to get there and back." I was going to call a regular taxi, and then I realized I'd been seeing this Green Cab parked in our lot a couple of spots over from mine.
I had a feeling it might be one of my neighbors, because I'd often seen Ethiopians driving Green Cabs.
So I left a note under the windshield wiper: "Hi neighbor! I see you drive a cab. Would you happen to be available on such-and-such a date and time to drive me over to San Jose and then back a couple of hours later?
He called, we made arrangements, and we sure had a lot to talk about between Ethiopian coffee and food and life in general.
You never know what kind of connection you may make with someone who is "just a taxi driver."
Even a couple of years ago on a business trip to Spain, the guys at the company there had a taxi driver they knew who they got to take me to their facility. Then I just organised with him to pick me up each day at a certain time when I paid. Beats me having to get the hotel or the company to keep having to call for cabs and beats him having to wait for fares.
Finally, I'm very surprised that you can't imagine somebody being rude to a low-wage worker...
People... talked before phones were invented?
Why is it so hard to imagine that the guy from the car service you always use might exchange some small talk when he drops someone off? Sometimes a friendly relationship develops between people who regularly interact
Perfectly sensible service to out-source and something that you want to work each time or have responsibility to arrange someone else to do same thing.
Heck, one of my neighbours is a taxi driver, and Im not in the office very often maybe 1 or 2 days a week, so for me having him drive me is cheaper, faster and less "Viral infectious" than paying for the commute on public transport.
I've arranged for him to pick up and deliver everything from people, dry cleaning, and packages in a pinch.
One thing about Dublin taxi drivers, they love to chat if given half a chance.
(Also it might have been a "car service" and the term taxi was being used a bit liberally there)
It's also bizarre to me that the company would have a "trusted taxi driver". A trusted driver for executives or something might make sense, but a trusted driver who isn't employed by your organization that you specifically route candidates through? It just doesn't sound like the type of thing that happens much to me.
Finally, on the subject of people being randomly rude to taxi drivers, never having been a taxi driver I don't have real first hand information. I did ride a public city bus multiple times a day for years though and the number of people who I witnessed being rude to the driver, who were not visibly drunk or homeless, is zero. It just doesn't fit with my experience of humanity to think that, in a typical daytime taxi ride you're going to get much absurdly inappropriate behavior - i.e behavior that would rise to the level of disqualifying the candidate. Maybe if the taxi driver were a woman I'd believe it, but I bet the vast majority of people would just say where they wanted to go and little else.