KEY POINTS:
She's a tough-talking, petite New Yorker who was fed up with her office job, so when Melissa Plaut was laid off she decided it was time for an adventure - driving one of the city's famed yellow taxi cabs.
Women make up about 1 per cent of New York City's 44,280 taxi drivers, also known as hacks, and for the past three years Plaut, 32, has been one of them, driving the night shift mainly around Manhattan, taking the occasional trip into New York's other famous boroughs: Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.
"I wanted to lead an interesting life, I guess," she said. "What better way to start having an adventure than to get behind the wheel of a yellow cab in New York."
Now she has written about her experiences in the book Hack - How I Stopped Worrying About What To Do With My Life And Started Driving A Yellow Cab, published by Villard Books.
When her father gave her a digital camera for her 30th birthday, she began taking pictures of what she saw from behind the wheel - traffic jams, drivers who cut her off, the scenery and sometimes her passengers.
She started putting them on a blog, http://www.newyorkhack.blogspot.com, and within months her blunt talk about her experiences was getting thousands of hits.
Before she knew it she had a deal to turn her blog into a book, in which she tells tales of being chased by an off-duty policeman suffering road rage, confronting a group of teenagers in a restaurant after they refused to pay and hanging out with fellow drivers at the garage.
Ms Plaut is not an imposing figure - small enough to need a cushion in the driver's seat. "It just gives me a little big of height," she said.
But she says she never felt threatened on duty.
"Nothing really scary. The only real thing is this guy got in wearing a ski mask once and I thought he would take it off," Ms Plaut said. "Maybe it was stupid of me to pick him up, but I did it anyway and he didn't take it off the entire ride."
The job has its seedier moments, such as when a man exposed himself. Many more threatened to expose themselves or asked her for oral sex, she said. Occasionally she'll pick up a celebrity, the most notable of which was television comedian Jon Stewart, who left her so star-struck she forgot to turn on the meter for 10 blocks.
Ms Plaut said she has to earn about US$160 ($230) a shift to cover the cost of leasing the cab and to pay for fuel before she makes any money for herself. She normally does 25 to 30 trips a shift.
"Is it stressful? Hell, yes. I gave up the office job which was stressful in its own way because I so despised it. This is stressful because every second there's something new happening, which is great, it's the beauty of the job.
"But it can also be slightly dangerous - people get mad at you, you're not making a guaranteed amount of money."
In rush hour her hand seems constantly ready to hit the horn, a trait for which New York taxi drivers are well known, she said she tries to exercise restraint.
Ms Plaut drives only a couple of shifts a week now and said she is ready to move on. But she'll miss her cab.
"It's like touching base with the city. There's something addictive about it."
- Reuters
