Chauffeuring Isn’t Taking Back Seat in This New Era

When it comes to chauffeuring in the ‘80s, Sherrie Van Vliet says, “the days of ‘Home, James’ are over.”

Van Vliet, 31, president of the Torrance-based Executive Chauffeuring School, is teaching a 16-hour driving and etiquette course at Orange Coast College this month, and she will offer the instruction again in February at Irvine Valley College.

“Orange County is growing tremendously in industry,” she told students at Orange Coast on Saturday, and with that growth will come the need for more limousines and people to drive them, Van Vliet added.

A one-time secretary who said she really wanted to be a race car driver, Van Vliet began chauffeuring nine years ago, and in 1982 she switched over to instruction and job referrals. Since then, she said, she has taught more than 1,100 students, either in six evening sessions or two daylong Saturday classes.

Most of her students are referred for jobs soon after completing the class, she said. The course, which costs $250, includes driving instructions and lectures that have just been compiled into a 124-page book, “The Professional Chauffeur’s Guide.”

One of the cardinal rules, according to the illustrated, paperbound book, is to “Maintain a professional, friendly rapport with your clients without befriending them. This chauffeur/client relationship will enable you to handle situations professionally without feeling awkward.”

If a client asks, for example, “Do you mind if I do cocaine?” as one asked Van Vliet, you respond crisply that you do mind. If offered a hit of marijuana, she advised, “don’t do it. Act professional.

“When the black screen goes up,” Van Vliet said, referring to the opaque barrier between the front and back seat, “there is usually something going on you don’t want to see.” In most limos the black screen can be raised from the front seat as well as the back seat, and there are occasions, she said, when discretion is the better part of safe driving.

“When ‘Debby Does Dallas’ is going on back there, I don’t need to see it,” she said. With the barrier up, Van Vliet added, “you don’t know what they did or where they got it.”

A far more common hazard for chauffeurs than drug use or sexual activity, Vliet said, is “Prom Night,” when passengers under the age of 21 must be given the bad news that “you’re not going to have any fun in this car.”

Chauffeurs should make plain at the outset that the evening’s fee, currently just over $100, is for transportation and not entertainment. Young people in limos for the first time, Van Vliet said, act “either rowdy or sophisticated,” but rarely any way in between. “You’ll know as soon as you go to the front door what kind of night you’re going to have,” she said.

Minor passengers should never be permitted to consume alcoholic beverages in the vehicle. In fact, she said, a recent ruling by the state attorney general’s office now prohibits one of the most-advertised attractions of limousine travel: a well-stocked bar.

Van Vliet said that as many as 50% of calls for limos are from first-time users--for proms, weddings and, increasingly, to bring mothers of newborns home from the hospital. The latter, she said, she found particularly touching. “If my husband had done that I might have stayed with him,” said Van Vliet, a mother of two who is now divorced.

Small gestures often translate into large tips, she said. A single, long-stemmed rose given to a male passenger for his wife or date is particularly effective, as is a Polaroid camera photo for couples to remember a special evening. A cap and white gloves, as a complement to the standard uniform of white shirt and three-piece black suit--for women chauffeurs as well as men--also increase gratuities, Van Vliet said.

The busiest night of the year in the Los Angeles area, she said, is New Year’s Eve, followed by weekends when the Super Bowl is at the Rose Bowl. After that, Oscar, Emmy and Grammy award nights “can be very lucrative, especially if you drive a winner.”

Included in the packet of materials distributed to each student is a guide to Beverly Hills, which she says is probably the most popular area for restaurants, “although Newport Beach holds its own,” and the new Ritz Carlton Hotel in Laguna Niguel is an increasingly popular destination.