When you are there, you might suspect you are, but your perceptions aren't level, and you fail Absent a great deal of statistically unlikely events, you are about to hand your chips over to someone else.
Recently, I've had personal experience with a loved one encountering a mental health episode. It's better now, and we are all grateful.
But the sense of helplessness that one has when in the presence is palpable. For this person, the issue manifested as paranoid delusions, which were, of course, impossible to refute with words or logic. You just had to be patient, wait them out, and have faith that it was not the new (ab)normal. It was one of the worst periods of my life, and like any of these cycles, I responded the same. A general numbness and trudging but persistent work to distract myself.
So, that's the prologue. Now, the ride story.
The ping comes in late in the evening on a day where I haven't made my target. Uber has dangled a surge price to keep me on the road, which has now faded. So I either take the next ride, regardless of condition or terms, or I lose the surge. I'm taking the next one unless it's completely outlandish. The ping comes in, and it's local. OK.
The pick up is supposed to be at a local 7-11. I get to the store and there is only one car in the parking lot, which I am presuming is the employee's. I wait for five minutes, no one shows or replies to my text, and I can cancel for a small fee. I do and head for home.
Two minutes later, the same name appears, but at an address. Oh... kay? Still have the surge price to chase, after all.
I roll up to the address, about five minutes from the 7-11. After a couple of minutes, the passenger makes his way to the car, and there's something... off... about him. He's a white guy probably in his 30s, tall, thin, dark clothing, and vibrating. Oh boy. He gets in the car, does not acknowledge my patter or the address confirmation (it's the 7-11), and off we go.
It is my standing practice to not make a lot of eye contact with passengers. There's no real reason for it, and if you are looking at your passenger, you aren't looking at the road. Over nine years, 39K+ rides, and relative safety and high tipping tells me this is a reasonable position to take.
So I can't and won't see if he's on the phone or not when he says what he says, which is... conspiratorial. Paranoid. Profane. Political. And all said at a pace that reminds me of listening to podcasts at accelerated speed, and at a volume that I can't quite ignore.
This is what real crazy looks like. Not theatric, not captivating, not a star turn from an actor with a meaty part, not well written or with memorable phrases. It's repetitive and upsetting and it makes you uneasy, because somewhere in the back of your primate brain you realize that everything about this person is wrong, and wrong might be contaigous. Or lead to unexpected outcomes.
Five minutes later, we're at the 7-11. He gets out and goes in and now I can't really trot out my excuse to not make eye contact, because there he is in the store. Through the glass I can see him vibrate, see his mouth move, but I can't see if there's anyone near him. This goes on for three minutes. I can't end the ride until five. I have no idea what he's doing, or why it's taking so long, or what is going to happen next. He leaves with a pack of cigarettes, gets into my car, and it's quieter for the five minutes back, but not quite quiet. At the drop, he leaves without incident. Still ranting.
Three stars or less means I never see him again, of course, and that seems like a no-brainer of a decision. The first rule of rideshare is get home safe, and this didn't feel that way at all.
On the other hand... he paid surge price (and a cancel fee), he didn't make me wait longer than most fares, and on some level, I don't want people like him to never get fares, because that hardly seems like it will help his situation. There could be any number of good and understandable reasons for the way he is, and, well? I didn't 3-star my loved one when they had their rough stretch.
I think about it for too long, and it sticks in me and sparks this post. I eventually did give him three, if for no other reason than it stuck in my head long enough to curtail my earnings, and that's not a practice to support.
A college professor back in the day in my political science course once attributed the quote of "human rights are for countries that can afford them" to a dictator. I haven't been able to track which one (Fidel Castro?), and since dictators tend to come outside of English as a first language (that's what we in poker would call a tell, folks), I'm not sure it was ever really said that way.
But the point applies. Compassion may also be for people who can afford it. Which doesn't really get my fare out of my head...
The ping comes in for a pickup at the train station, and I'm about 10 minutes away. A woman's name in all caps with a lower than usual rating has some yellow flags on it, but I need to bump my acceptance numbers and business is always light after the New Year. I accept the ride and start to make my way to the pick up.
Two minutes later, there's a text from the passenger. "I AM WAITING"
And yes, a kind reply would be to assume age, or newness to the platform, or that she just pressed send too fast and was going to give a location next.
But kindness is not where my inner (inner?) hack comedy writer lives, so I consider the following replies...
OH NOOO NOT THAT
Teleportation costs extra
I AM DRIVING
Tragic
Enjoy that
And record a voice note to my snarky family looking for other options, all while continuing to make my way to the pickup.
She cancels a minute later, adding a few bucks to the day's take. And, of course, the memories...
The pick up is suburban with a driveway, so I pull in. My passenger isn't waiting for me, so I k-turn and wait, and catch up on email. A few minutes later, my guy appears at the door and asks for assistance, as he's using a walker. I pop out, try and fail to fold down the device, and eventually just fold down the back seats of the hatchback and put him in the front seat. This is also where I'm getting a whiff of unwell about him, but the job is like that sometimes, and the drop off at a supermarket isn't too far away. Forward.
Since he's in the front seat, small talk is more likely, and I like the shifts where that happens more than the ones where it doesn't. I ask him if he's been in the area long, which is usually my entry into restaurant recommendations and the like, when he replies with something I wasn't anticipating. "No, I'm from Trenton, and I'm homeless."
I offer condolences before a particularly awkward silence, which he eventually ends with, "It's my cousin's fault."
Having nothing to add to this, we drive in silence for another half a minute, as I wonder if turning up music would be a little too obvious. Before I can decide, he adds, "It's OK. I will have my revenge."
Which somehow prompts me to reply, "Well, you know what they say, the best revenge is a life well lived..."
Which doesn't seem terribly helpful to a person who is, well, homeless.
He doesn't say anything the rest of the way, and neither do I...
In the last month or so, Lyft has started giving me little tidbits about passengers before I accept the ride. "Has tipped on 72% of rides." "Is usually waiting for the driver." "You gave them 5 stars last time."
My guess is that this is all I being done to nudge drivers into taking a higher percentage of rides (while, of course, paying less for those rides, because Enshittification Is Everything Now)... but the reality is that the passengers who behave worse than others are going to find themselves in a spiral of worse service.
And while that seems fine and justified on some level, on another... no.
Not to get too philosophical about this, but no one is 100% of anything. Some of the worst rated passengers I've ever had turned out to be just fine, but were victimized by a past driver. Some of the best rated passengers seem to get there purely from the power of buying their way out of bad behavior.
There's also this: judge not, lest ye be judged. Ridesharing is something of a microcosm of society on this, where rating every experience is somewhere on the spectrum of useless because AI slop and disregarding, or hyper-vigilance since the rating can end your income.
Meanwhile, this: both apps are now doing full-blown invasive telemetrics to determine how "good" of a driver you are. This is determined by harsh braking, speeding, etc. But here's a spoiler on that... if I really want my harsh braking scores to go down, it's easy. I just drive later in the day, when there is less traffic to inspire harsh braking. Or I run more yellow to red lights, since the app isn't bright enough to understand when protecting myself from tickets and collisions is the cause, rather than aggro tailgating and unsafe driving.
This is all, of course, a beta tech problem, and eventually the data will catch up and course correct, but in the meantime?
Everyone probably just needs to give each other a break.
If a passenger is a little late, stinky or unpolite, I need to chalk it up to the rest of their day, and not a need to punch down on the driver. If your ride isn't quite to your preference (depending on the passenger, I'm either too slow, fast, chatty or robotic)... maybe look in the mirror and question the importance of the complaint.
Or why, exactly, we want to live in a surveliiance state in the first place.
