What goes through my mind when the passenger chooses to record the ride

Depending on the day and circumstance, all or none of these in varying sequence.

> You've had a terrible ride in your past, and you are going to look at every driver from here on out as an echo of that driver. You really hate having to take rides from strangers, but circumstances dictate it, and you can't wait for driverless cars, your own vehicle, or something else to solve the situation you are in right now. There is nothing that I can say or do to help, so let's get you to your destination as quickly and silently as possible. I'm sorry you choose to live in fear. I hope you don't spend the rest of your life that way.

> Who else do you record in your day to day life? Your waitress, bartender and fast food crew could easily poison you. Recording the police is more than defensible, but since they have weapons, you probably don't do that. Your supermarket teller or checkout person, assuming you don't spend your entire life scanning your own stuff at the self check out, could be ripping you off. Your kid's teacher could be filling their minds with things you don't agree with. Your priest could be getting the teachings all wrong and imperiling your very soul. You doctors and nurses could kill you, or at the very least, cause you significant pain and expense. 

And yet, out of all of these professionals that you pay, directly or indirectly, only I, a gig worker who could easily be making less per hour than is generally allowed by law, gets to live under constant survelliance and paranoia. Only I get to feel like I'm guilty until proven innocent. Only I get to feel bad for doing you the paid service of bringing you into my personal vehicle and acting as your chauffuer. 

> Are you recorded at your work? If so, do you like it, and any manager that insists on doing it? Would you put up with this from your spouse or children? Do you do it to them as well, because in your life, crime and violence and a general lack of integrity is the norm, rather than the exception?

> Thanks for helping my brain to go into this cycle, rather than, I don't know, focusing on the road and traffic, or enjoying the scenery or the radio or the music or a conversation with someone who might have something interesting or funny to say. But given that you choose to record your transportation gig worker, I'm pretty sure that nothing you say will be interesting or funny to me, and if that offends you... well, you went there first.

> You are getting three stars at maximum, which means that I will never drive you again, and maybe other drivers won't either, because some restrict the app to exclude passengers with low ratings. You are getting complete silence, possibly with the side of awkwardness where I turn off any music or radio. You are not getting a friendly greeting, any small talk at all, and if I have the ability to end the ride early, either through you not getting in the car fast enough or taking too long at a stop, I'm taking that opportunity. In a world where people get up in arms about AI data centers taking their water and driving up their electric bills, you are contributing to the problem with a great deal of useless data, which is to say, the complete silence of this ride. You are making this job, and indirectly the world, worse. 

> I hate the platform that provides this ability to the passenger, and who keep giving me these kinds of passengers to drive. Clearly, other drivers are making more than me because they just take this insult without self-sabotaging themselves with all of these thoughts and, well, more passengers in their area who don't have three stars from them from a previous ride.

> I'm dumb for doing this in the first place. I should be doing, well, anything else. Even though I am good at it, and much of the job agrees with me.

> Maybe the whole reason the platform is pushing people to record their rides is that they are hoping that I'll say or do something that they will use to deactivate me, despite the 10+ years and 43,000+ rides that I have completed. After all, they can't wait to axe me and every other human and replace us with machines, because they are de facto vampires and hoarders of wealth who are making the world worse. It's good that this passenger is recording this ride, because it reminds me not to use my Consitutional right to free speech, well, ever, because only rich people can afford to have opinions now. Free speech is a myth in a survalliance society, and all they are doing is reminding me of that fact. Thank you so much for reminding me of how much we have all agreed to ruin the world.

> I should totally record this ride, and get a dashboard camera and secondary backseat camera that lets the passenger know that two can play at this asshat game. If I don't get to speak without fear, why should they?'

> Eh, they are probaly choosing to record the ride without thinking. I should cut them a break and not assume they mean it as a personal slight. Besides, I'm only making myself miserable when I engage in all of the above. Just be nice and pay it forward. Many passengers just want a ride and nothing else, and it's not like I haven't been in that mood myself on many an occasion. Maybe they are having a terrible day. and silence is their only comfort right now, and they think that recording the ride will get them that.

> But, um, still. Three stars? 

Some tips hit different

 The ping comes to a laundromat (not a great sign, historically), in a weak area for rideshare (strike two) with the kind of name and rating that says previous drivers have not wanted to repeat the experience. My ratings and overall activity level aren't good enough to decline, so I grit my teeth and take it. I won't be doing this at the same rate soon, thanks to a new assignment, so there's only so much self-pity to indulge. They can't all be gems.

I get to the pick up site, and my passenger is getting help from two people that aren't joining her in the car, and she needs it -- four or five bags of laundry and a walker don't exactly mix. I put the passenger in the front seat so she doesn't have to sit with the walker in her lap, and hear the next thing I don't want to hear; a request for an extra stop at the drug store, and not the drive in. She asks for a price, and I don't give her one, which means... well, this badly paying ride is going to get worse. On a weak shift to begin with.

When a passenger needs a stop that isn't previously noted, it's a financial hit to both the platform and the driver, especially when you are already in for the bad penny of a weak ride. It also prevents the app from finding you the next ride, and limiting the time between passengers is right up there with inspiring tips and achieving bonuses in the ranks of making the return livable. (Along with, well, not taking rides from laundromats in bad neighborhoods.)

But when I'm picking up a person with a walker, haggling is just not something I'm going to do. I put her in the front seat, silently note that the roadside motel that is here final destination is a place of past pathos, and away we go.

She asks if she can get me something (no, I bring my own beverages and try to avoid fast food), which is always a bit of a sore spot. Folks, drivers are doing this for money only, and when you try to supplement with food and drinks et al, it's got an air of infantilizing. I know that's not the intention, but the vibe is what it is. After ten minutes of plowing through emails and ignoring the app's request to confirm my safety from a long stop, she gets back in the car and away we go.

As we get close to the motel, I ask if she has a room already, and she tells me she's been there for a while, so yes, and do I know of any apartments (um, no). I go to her door, unload the laundry, steady the walker and... get a handshake with random metal. It turns out to be four quarters and a double AA battery. I thank her, palm the battery to put it one of her laundry bags, and get back in the car to move the front seat back up... and find a dried out dollar bill on the seat.

There's no way that this passenger is housing secure. She also needs the dollar bill and four quarters a lot more than I do. But my charity was to not charge for the stop, and her charity was to part with two discretionary dollars. Assuming, of course, that the second dollar was intentional.

It's not my biggest tip of the day, or the smallest. 

Just the most memorable.

An Ode To My Wife

 Frequent readers of this blog might recognize "Super Pollo 2", a local restaurant with a dubious idea for a mascot (a chicken wearing a superhero cape that is serving, presumably, other chickens). I pass by this place several dozen times a week while doing the rideshare hustle, and the sign has kind of taunted me, enough to develop a back story of its rivalry with Super Pollo 1 (a half dozen blocks away), the McDonald's Land style skits ending in the death of other chickens by Our Hero, and my daydreams of staging lucha libre fights between chickens on the sidewalk in front of the place. It has created literally dozens of text chains in my family's group chat, and more eyerolls from the kids than probably anything else I've ever texted about.

What it hadn't produced, in all of that time, was a visit. Which is where my wife comes in.

She's currently taking chemo in the first few months of treating breast cancer. Which means the usual side effects, both mental and physical. She's been predictably great through all of it, proactive about what's happening, and refusing to give up the stuff she loves (harp gigs, relative fiscal solvency through part time work on top of that). But the fight is a personal one, and my hours tend to be all over the board, so last night she asked for a lunch date.

And when I suggested Super Pollo 2, she was game.

The meal was reasonable -- slow service, Chick Fil-A level quality only without the lines or grim corporate overtones. The experience was, alas, not worthy of my comedic backstory, and we were probably the only people speaking English in the place. We may or may not go back. It's just OK and my predilection is almost always towards the New, not the Known.

But the company, and the knowledge that having this experience would have been completely impossible without her? Priceless. And that goes way beyond actually walking into the place. She's my best friend, fondest audience, and has been for (checks watch) 27 years and counting.

And next week, when I come out with something sillier and stupider to amuse her? 

She'll be down with that, too.

May you all be so blessed to spend your life with someone else who gets you half as much as she does me...

When The Rider Goes Full Newhart

 I've done stand-up comedy a few times in my life. Just enough to know (a) how hard it is, (b) how I might be good at it, and (c) how I'm not going to have enough time to seriously pursue getting very good at it, and certainly don't have enough money to spend my time that way. Road not taken, and all that. But part of that experience is watching a great deal of it with a critical eye, and understanding why different practicioners succeed or fail for me.

A famous old-school stand-up routine is Bob Newhart giving you half of a telephone conversation. The conversation is ridiculous, but what makes it work is Newhart's deadpan demeanor as he listens to, and tries to correct, the other side. 

Anyhoo. Go to YouTube if you haven't seen these. Back to the story.

The pick up is in the outskirts of Princeton and happens without incident. My rider is a male, mid-20s, on the phone. Rude but common. I do the usual (confirm address, reveal amenities), and turn down my music so that his phone call doesn't compete. I've got him for 20 minutes and it's relatively lucrative. I can also hear every word of his end of the conversation...

And my man is engaged in a *passionate* debate with someone ("Bubbe"?) over the relative merits of his choices of reality television programming, and dismissive of the merits of *their* reality television programming.

Specifically, "MILF Manor."

For those of you who are unaware of what a MILF is, well, it's a Mom I'd Like to (Redacted). To each their own, and I don't care to judge or share my own proclivities. But in MILF Manor, the (inevitably younger) men are paired and scrutinized with the older women, with the hidden twist that these are the moms of... the other men.

In short, it's a car crash of cringe, and if you like to watch that sort of thing, again, to each their own.

But what got me back to the Newhart callback was the *vehemence* of the defense. "You didn't even give it a chance!" was heard, and apparently delivered without irony, or with the goal of "Let's see if I can say something into my phone that will make the driver give me some kind of reaction."

And, well, Nope.

But congratulations, my MILF Manor enthusiast, for making the blog...

Catching up on an unwanted day off

 Last winter was rough in central New Jersey, which means Pothole and Road Repair Season has been particularly long and troublesome. When these things occur, the chance of catching misery in the form of a flat tire increase, and it's now happened to your poor author three times in the last six weeks. 

Which means that instead of working on a holiday weekend when I might make a decent buck, I'm home catching up on blog-worthy moments. It's not as lucrative, but lemons, lemonade.

> Rider, on exit before Memorial Day, wishes me a happy holiday. I get it; to him, it's just a day off and maybe an invite to the cookout. If I was quicker and braver, I might have said something like, "You know it, bro! Every year we go to the ceremony, exhume the bodies and have a kegger." Or "My people go hard! Time to dig up the pets in the backyard and put on the annual puppet show!"

This may be why I'm not invited to the cookout, actually.

> My area is festooned with political signs for a candidate named Wang, which, I am sorry to inform said candidate, triggers my always-on internal 12-year-old boy who only knew that as a profane euphemism. Finally, a political candidate you can get behind! If, well, that's your thing. No judgment. Support Wang!

> I also had a recent pick up with the name of Prat, who I suspect has already heard things about this.

> Pick up at the Trenton train station for a run to an industrial site in Florence, about 20 minutes south. As we start to chat, she asks me if I want to "help", which piques my ears. It turns out that my fare is in the midst of a prank war with her guy, and has gotten on a plane to visit him without warning at his place of work. As such, she needs me to call him from the parking lot to tell him he's got a delivery. This is done to solid effect and without undue delay, so, yeah, Fare of the Month, this.

> Overheard at the end of a nightclub drop off: "Please do not tell my boyfriend I do drugs! We're getting married!" Even if I could, I wouldn't, because my sweet summer child, I would be highly surprised if he doesn't already know...