Female Cabbie: 'I'm a bit of an anomaly'
One of New York's few female cabbies writes a popular blog about her job.
Oct. 22, 2007 — -- Melissa Plaut is an anomaly. Out of New York City's 44,000 licensed cabdrivers, she is one of only 400 female cabbies who get behind the wheel every day. With women making up just 1 percent of the city's taxi work force, Plaut says many of her customers are surprised when they get this college-educated, native New Yorker as their driver.
"Most passengers comment on the fact that I'm female by just telling me that I'm female." said Plaut, who also happens to be gay and Jewish, in an interview with ABC News. "It's safe to say that I'm a bit of an anomaly."
However, a little more than two years ago, Plaut found a way to use her position to her advantage. Since August 2005, she has written about her experiences as a New York City taxi driver in her blog, "New York Hack." Originally intended just for family and friends, Plaut's blog took off, gaining popularity and attracting attention from even non-New Yorkers.
"I was surprised that people responded so positively to the blog, and that so many people were interested in it," she said. "When I started the blog, it was primarily just for my friends. I got a digital camera for my birthday, and I started taking pictures of what I saw on cab shifts. I started loading them online and e-mailing them to friends and putting in captions. They wrote more words. They asked for more words, and I started writing longer and longer stories after every single shift. So the blog turned into stories behind the wheel."
Eventually, Plaut's musings caught the attention of publishers at Random House, which landed her an offer to turn her Web site into a book, thus giving life to "Hack: How I Stopped Worrying About What to Do With My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab." "Hack" was published last August.
In the book, Plaut explains how she began driving a taxi at the age of 28, what she has learned on the job, and the memorable rides she has taken in her three years as a "hack."
After graduating from the University of New Mexico, Plaut worked for an advertising agency writing ad copy, a job she says she was "never happy with." After being laid off and unsure of what to do with her life, she resolved to "have a series of adventures," the first of which would be driving a cab in New York City.
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