When Uber Feels Like Punishment

Every trip to the warehouse

With 22% fewer active drivers in Q1 2021 and a growing number of passengers as fears of the pandemic subside (for good or ill), ride prices are up by 79% since 2019. (Numbers from a recent story in my feed that I'm not going to cite. Feeds gonna feed.)

So this is a wonderful time to be an Uber driver, right? Especially when every stray cough from the back seat doesn't make you question your life choices, and summer nights means windows down for safe full ventilation...

Well, no. 

What's going on now is that the income inequalities between good and bad shifts are higher. Which means that when a shift goes south, it stings more at a human level. As a driver, it's much harder to be patient about that sort of thing. (And let's face it: if I'm in the car, it's because my other clients aren't keeping me busy enough. I had three, these days, it's closer to one. It's what happens in marketing in summer, and it's not good times.)

Which leads me to the experience of spending the better part of an hour driving a warehouse worker to their location last week. It was late at night, because of course it was. It took a long time to get to them, because of course there aren't drivers clamoring for this kind of fare. I didn't want long rides to warehouse areas late at night because I was chasing a ride completion bonus, which is why I was out late in the first place.

But I also had received nothing but long rides for the better part of the week from that platform, and the math only lets you choose so much.

So I had to do it. So did my fare. They weren't (ever) going to tip, because the only reason why you'd want a warehouse job late at night is because your other life choices have led you to, well, this. You also probably aren't going to be thrilled or great company, because you had to wait a really long time for your ride.

When a fare like this happens, what you are tempted to do is turn off the app, drive empty back to the area where prices are surging, and try to restart your shift at a better hourly rate.

Which is when, if you are me, you get a far request from outside of the surge area, for half or less of the bonus you saw on screen a few seconds ago. To a warehouse.

The side hustle doesn't *always* feel like punishment. Maybe the night shift warehouse job doesn't, either.

But when it does?

Yeah. 

A lot.

When The Passenger Performs

 As we move slowly and haltingly out of the pandemic, we're starting to get back to a rideshare experience where conversation with the driver is more common. This can make the shift more memorable... but not, well, more pleasant. Let's get into ome of the month's, um, best.

> "I just got out of prison." (Followed up by that he's late for his parole visit to a halfway house, and that he's drunk.)

Well, thanks for sharing. Let's just get you to where you are going so that I can 3-star you once I'm no longer in your line of sight... regardless of your tip.

> Two passengers decide to perform a drunken performance art skit involving same-sex shenanigans, as if this is something I'm going to react strongly to. (And yes, having known Proud people for decades, I can tell when it's drunken straight guys doing a bit. You could too, assuming your usual ride isn't on the back of a turnip truck.) 

After ten minutes of escalation ending in a drop off and three stars, I head off to my next fare... who tell about a lump of evening-changing cash in the back, and refuses to take any of it as a finder's fee. Karmic costs!

Now, it's not always bad. 

> I had an amazing fare for an hour with a woman who works in archaeology. Had a personal connection to a recent scandal involving the disposal of remains from the MOVE tragedy. Also confirmed that the coverage of human sacrifice in Central American indigenous tribes was oversold on cultural racism. Great hour.

> Another amazing conversation with a computer engineer at a big brokerage firm who used to be a (wait for it) performing ballerina. Since she presents as female in that field, she also gets to be the social conduit for other members of the team. Sounds lucrative, but far from equitable -- and the neighborhood that I dropped her off in was in no way what you'd predict for either of those occupations. You never know, really.

> A guy who was recovering from the previous day's entertainment by stalking down his phone, including hours or pawing through his garbage. At least his day ended well.

If patterns continue, more soon...

Murder The Deer Now Please

Please End These

According to the Wall Street Journal, in some developed parts of the United States, there are 50 to 114 deer per square kilometer. Before European settlement, the number was more like 2 to 4 per square kilometer, mostly because there's nothing alive that eats deer anymore. Once you get past 8, it's really not good, because they eat everything.

What also happens when they get past 8 is that your poor rideshare driver spends their time behind the wheel twitching while they count deer. I generally see a half dozen ore more per night, and that's with actively trying to stay in urban areas. 

I don't have a solution for this. New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the country, and reintroducing wolves to the burbs or hunters with guns blazing on highway overpasses is probably not a win, either. Tranquilizations and sterilizations may be an idea, and giving away processed venison seems like a fine thing for the meat eaters among us to eat responsibly. 

But I've been doing this for 4 years now, and every year, the deer are more numerous -- and always getting worse. Things that can't continue don't.

More numbers... 

My Old Guy Question And Moment

The Only Wheel They Use

 A question to the cyclists of my local urban area... 

Are you shamed by people who see you riding on both wheels, rather than the one?

Or is there some other reason why you are seemingly always driving on just the back wheel?

I used to ride a bike a lot. Once I got past the emotional, physical and mental age of 12, my need to Pop A Wheelie kind of went away, especially when you realize that (a) falling is a lot more likely on one wheel than two, and falling sucks, and (b) you are paying for both wheels, so you might as well use them.

Oh, and one more thing... the roads you are doing this on are some of the worst in the state and the area. Lots and lots of potholes.

So is there something I'm missing here? A secret desire to have a unicycle, because everyone is down to clown?

Where We Are In Re The Pandemic And Masking

According to the NY Times, 61% of my local friends and neighbors of the 18+ population, which is to say the people who are most likely to be in my car, are fully vaccinated. So am I, of course, and have been for months now. New cases are coming in around the 3 a day rate, and hospitalizations are limited almost exclusively to the people who refuse to be vaccinated. 

Rideshare platforms still require full masking, and as a driver, I'm required to have one on for the duration of the ride. I also get to report anyone who isn't masked to make sure they do it the next time, and I can refuse service to anyone who isn't masked.

Which is to say, I can choose to take money out of my pocket to enforce the policy, because it's not as if I'll make the full fare, or get credit for it as I try to achieve various bonuses, for refusing service. I'll get a minimal cancel fee and many provoke someone freaking out on my car.

Guess who almost never refuses service?

It helps that it's summer. I can lower all of the windows (sometimes a bit pointedly, especially when highways are involved), and I try to do most of my driving at night, when traffic and temperatures are both light and it's not as uncomfortable to wear a mask. My trust three-level mask plus my Pfizer vaccine means that if a passenger is pretty believable about their vax story, we might both take off our masks and enjoy the air conditioning and a conversation.

More and more passengers are also expecting to sit in the front seat and occupy all four seats of my car (never ideal; it's a small hybrid and thank heavens for that, given the rising cost of gas). More and more passengers, especially later at night with alcohol involved, are getting in without a mask. I'd rather they didn't, and if they do, I'd really like to either have no conversation at all (fewer aerosols) or a lot of details about their vaccination...

But if you are choosing to do rideshare, you need the money, right? And you always knew the job was dangerous (I've had my car hit hard enough to prompt an insurance claim twice, both times in the city where I get the most work), and you are doing it anyway, right?

Well, less of us than before, hopefully for more money per hour, and hopefully never full-time...

Why You Can't Get Rides: The Thread and the Triangle

This last week, one of my free-lance clients more or less took a summer break. Not incredibly unexpected, and certainly not fatal to our long-term relationship, but it is what it is: suddenly, there is less money in my life. Combine this with two major bills, and I had to get back in the car for significant hours to make my nut. So be it; that's what rideshare is for, after all. Employment court of the last resort.

Just in time for the Uber app to more or less stop working for me. For the better part of a week, no matter what kind of surge price zone I was in. Here's a screen shot from the first ten, very frustrating, hours of the week.

Note that my surge price was a lot more than the regions were showing? That's because I had been in the app for hours without a request, turning it on and off, reinstalling the software, checking my Internet connection, and so on. Eventually, I just left Uber on while doing Lyft work for less, on the off chance that it would finally start working again, and I'd finally catch that nice surge price.

Here's the impact this had on my net hourly rate. (Well, that and Lyft sending me to on a two-hour plus trip to JFK without warning, because that's the kind of thing Lyft likes to do, and a big reason why I try not to drive for Lyft anymore.)

7/5-7/11: $19.26 per hour

6/28-7/4: $34.90 per hour

6/21-6/27: $36.44 per hour

6/14-6/20: $38.65 per hour

I had no way to fix this, no way to re-start my revenue, no way to actually connect with the customers that the platform is supposed to provide to me. Through no fault of my own (current driver rating: 4.96; I'm good at this), my revenue from Uber went to zero on four different shifts. Thank heavens I had Lyft as a (not as good) back up, or the bad financial week would have been even worse.

FYI, I finally started getting requests again-- after alerting me to an Uber Driver app update, and only after a half dozen form letters to various complaints that showed absolutely no evidence of the rep actually reading the complaint. Always with a very Indian sub-continent name, and always overnight, so, yeah, you can tell charming stories of how much Uber is paying customer service reps.

Anyway, getting back to the triangle. Until cars drive themselves, rideshare is best imagined as a triangle. Mark one corner as D for Driver, another as R for rider, and the last as P for platform...

Now, find a place where D, R and P are all happy.

Make it too good for the driver and platform and it costs too much; passengers find another option, especially in the long-term. Make it too good for the rider while still paying the driver, and the platform takes it in the neck from the stock market for taking too long to turn a profit (if ever). Make it too good for the rider while still paying the platform means the driver will find something else to do with their time.

That's what the vast majority of drivers did during the more brutal parts of the pandemic, and in all likelihood, will continue to do -- unless there's a massive and long-term change in the math that just forces a more expensive ride on riders, or a lower take for the platforms.

And even then, the platform can end a driver at any moment, because no matter how many rides we've given (me: over 18K), we're all hanging by the thread of the next request.

Which, as the first ten hours of Uber showed me last week, may never come.

And that, my dear passengers, is why you are having such a hard time finding someone to pick you up...