My Office Has No Walls
My office doesn’t have cubicles or Zoom meetings. It has four wheels, a meter, and a city that never sits still. I’m a taxi driver in New York City — not one of those black cars or ride-share hybrids — just a regular yellow cab, the kind that’s been part of this city longer than most of the people in it.
Every day I drive through a living, breathing puzzle. Manhattan’s grid, Brooklyn’s curves, Queens’ chaos — I’ve got it all memorized. GPS? That’s for tourists. I know which avenues flow fast at 2 PM and which intersections are suicidal at rush hour. I’ve dodged more potholes than you’ve had hot meals.
I didn’t grow up here. I came from Dhaka twelve years ago. Back then, driving a cab felt like a step up — a way to earn fast, send money home, and get a foothold in America. I didn’t expect to still be doing it in my forties, but here I am. This job keeps me grounded — sometimes literally, when traffic doesn’t move for 45 minutes.
But there’s magic in this grind. I’ve driven models heading to castings in SoHo. Grandmothers visiting grandkids in the Bronx. A Hasidic man and a drag queen once shared the back seat and laughed about gefilte fish. You don’t see that anywhere else in the world. Only in this metal box on wheels.
Of course, it’s not all heartwarming stories. I’ve been yelled at, stiffed on tips, threatened, even robbed once in the Lower East Side. But I’ve also been handed surprise twenty-dollar bills “just for being kind.” I’ve had riders who prayed before leaving. One gave me a homemade sandwich at 2 AM because she thought I looked tired.
Sometimes, I think about quitting. The medallion loan I took is a weight around my neck. Uber crushed our rates. The city gives us tickets for blinking the wrong way. But then I catch a glimpse of the skyline at dawn from the Queensboro Bridge, and I remember why I stay.
You don’t become rich driving a cab here. But you become something else — a quiet witness to a million lives. A thread in the city’s story. That’s not nothing.
And tomorrow? I’ll be back on the streets. Same yellow car. Same wild city. Ready for whatever walks through that door.