Few people would put cab driver at the top of the list of “jobs most likely to make me happy”, but there’s one New York cabbie who’s making his own happiness by playing matchmaker to his single customers:
The 50-year-old Egyptian immigrant sets up blind dates for his single passengers through a free, impromptu matchmaking service he runs out of his yellow cab. He said he finds mates, or at least dates, for about eight people a week.
“New York is a very tough city for dating,” Ibrahim mused while driving through the West Village recently. “I have heard a lot of crying in this cab, a lot of fighting and a lot of broken hearts.”
“Sometimes great people were just missing each other by minutes; one would get in my cab just as another had gotten out,” he said.
It all started by accident:
“I was joking around with this girl … who said she couldn’t find a boyfriend,” he recalled. Ibrahim took her number.
Three days later, a man got in his cab and bemoaned his bad luck finding a woman. Ibrahim called the woman and gave her the man’s number. Three weeks later, she called back and said they had gone on a date and were getting along great.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is my new project,”‘ he said.
How’s that for creating your own (and others’) happiness at work.
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