Airport Offers Hygiene Rules for Cabbies

Doormen at pricey hotels in this desert resort have taken to giving cab drivers the needle lately, barely suppressing their smirks as they ask: “Is your breath fresh? Have you had your sprinkle today?”

The cabbies are not amused.

But officials at the Palm Springs Regional Airport have been getting complaints. Sensitive complaints. Personal complaints. The kind that are normally whispered . . . body odor, bad breath.

The Airport Commission, which sets rules for cabbies when they are at the airport, was worried that those complaints about the unwashed could reduce the flow of tourist masses. So the panel sprang into action.

The result was a proposed list of regulations to all cab drivers--shower with soap, brush teeth with toothpaste, consume breath mints daily. The suggested rules are to be discussed at a commission meeting Wednesday.

Cabbies have cried, well . . . foul. They say they are outraged and insulted, and contend that they do not need a primer on personal hygiene.

The Airport Commission has held them up to ridicule, cabbies say. “Just because I don’t work in an air-conditioned office doesn’t mean I need someone to tell me to take a shower and brush my teeth,” said Rafael Meghnagi, who supports himself and his wife by driving a cab 15 to 18 hours a day. “And what kind of man chews little itsy-bitsy breath mints?”

Driver George Turner said cabbies “just want those people to stay in their air-conditioned offices, enjoy their secretaries and eight-hour days and let us earn our livings in peace.”

Turner was thrust into the public spotlight late last year when a woman wielding a curling iron as though it were a gun hijacked him in his cab.

“These regulations are crazy,” Turner said of the proposed rules. “I was just surprised they didn’t tell me what brand of toothpaste to use.”

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The Palm Springs airport may be small, but it boasts the world’s only outdoor putting green in an airport terminal, an outdoor cocktail patio and a sunbathing area.

It operates under “the same philosophy as Disneyland,” said airport manager Allen Smoot. “Our employees do their jobs with a smile and think about what they look like. We’re not LAX with 25 million people coming through. We have 500,000 customers a year, and we can’t afford to lose one of them because [of] a cab driver.”

Palm Springs cab drivers, who average about $70 for a 12-hour day after gas and other expenses, pay the airport $1 for each private fare and $3 for each commercial fare. They wait in line at the airport as much as four hours for their turn at the curb. Whether they pick up a fare headed across the street or across the Coachella Valley is a matter of luck.

About 150 cabs and 250 cab drivers work in the Palm Springs desert resort communities. Sunline Transit Agency, which regulates taxis, did an informal survey of drivers and came up with a list of eight cabbies Smoot identified as “unkempt.”

“They are just not what our City Council would like to project to the traveling public,” he said.

Edwin Meir, one cabbie not known for his sartorial splendor, proudly raised his fist to the sky and proclaimed: “We’re cabdrivers. We don’t want to be told by anyone what to do.”

A wiry man given to wearing a sports coat and a valentine-emblazoned baseball cap, Meir railed against the regulations.

“Yes, I need to come to work neat and clean, but that’s because if you stink, you get no tip,” he said. “Simple. Not because I am under rule.”

Cab drivers’ cleanliness has also been an issue in the tourism-driven city of Vancouver, Canada. When a large influx of new immigrants joined the ranks of cabbies, tourists began to complain that the immigrant cabbies did not bathe, were rude and drove recklessly.

The city responded last year with a training program--TaxiHost--that improves driving skills, familiarity with local streets and highways, deportment and hygiene.

Many airports in the United States have dress codes for cab drivers--codes usually developed jointly with cab company owners, airports and city governments.

Los Angeles International Airport requires drivers to wear black pants, a white shirt and black tie.

“But there are no regulations about baths and breath mints,” said airport cab dispatcher Marvette Eggleston. “That’s their own business.”

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Palm Springs cab drivers say the regulations proposed for them are the latest episode in a history of airport harassment.

For example, sleeping in cabs in the airport waiting area is prohibited, cabbies complain. At night, airport law enforcement officers walk the lines of waiting taxis, shining lights in cab windows. Any driver caught sleeping must leave, losing a place in line.

When temperatures reached 120 degrees last summer and the wait for fares grew to five hours, cabbies said, officials banned drivers from the airport’s air-conditioned lobby, saying they were taking seats meant for customers.

Sunline Transit has agreed to pay $9,000 a year to rent a windowless but air-conditioned room that cabbies will be able to use by summer.

Meghnagi, who has taken to showering three times a day, said the commission has overreacted to a small number of offending drivers.

“I’m thinking . . . eight smelly cab drivers out of 250?” he asked. “I bet if you took 250 of anything--cops, lawyers, doctors--there’s going to be a few who need a bath. Remember school? Wasn’t there always one kid who didn’t smell good?”

Driving a cab is a hard way to make a living, Meghnagi said, and the Airport Commission keeps making it harder.

“They have me scared. People will think I’m smelly,” he said. “Getting up early, working day and night . . . it’s hard to smell pretty. I sprayed perfume but my customers were allergic to it.”