What Rideshare Is Like Now (Again)

In case you were wondering how Omicron has impacted the rideshare economy...

Yeah, um, The Trends Are Not Good.

What's different now from earlier waves of the epidemic is the nature of pickups. I'm still getting a reasonable number of passengers, which has allowed me to qualify for bonuses -- critical for getting this out of minimum wage range -- but it's commuters now. Warehouse work off hours, restaurant workers dealing with take out orders, grocery shoppers, and the occasional train traveler. We're working. For now.

What's missing? College students. Drinkers. Travelers. Mall shoppers. People out for a good time, and doing the responsible thing by letting a professional drive, so they can imbibe without worry. And without those folks (and, well, their greater propensity to tip, and their numbers to create surge price), the potential for lucrative hours evaporates, and you just have to work longer, for less per hour, to make what you need to make.

Anything else missing? Sure. Conversations. Tips. Surge zones. Efficiency. 

But also? My ratings are going back up. People are wearing masks again. They also seem more appreciative of the cleanliness standards and the complementary sanitizer.

And also... no one knows how much longer the pandemic is going to last, or if there's going to be a flurona or deltacron swerve. But the people in my car?

They are going to work. Because they have to. Same as me. Until this thing gets a lot deadlier, now that we know more and have vaccines and masks and an understanding of how it travels.

And also, no one's thinking about stimulus checks and unemployment compensation or anything else coming to save us. 

Finally, every cough, every sniffle? Met with suspicion. And whenever it's not too bitterly cold, a little bit wider opening of my window.

You Didn't Give Me Much To Go On

It's late in a very long shift. I'm working in Lyft and not knowing where I'm going on pick up, which is stressful but required at this time. I'm running out of hours in the shift to get the number of rides I need. After an intermittent amount of surge, I'm getting long rides to pick up at the lowest possible rate. If the job is fishing, and it is, you have to accept bad hours of it. This will be one of them.

This is also when your outlier rides happen. Especially in Lyft on the East Coast. Sometimes you get great people, and sometimes you get people that Uber booted. So it goes.

I drive 15 minutes to get to a passenger who doesn't use their real name on their account, so we're deep in the red flag territory already. My passenger comes from a building that isn't their address, and we're off for a 2-stop drive (another red flag) to the nearest 7-11. Which is 15 minutes away, at this hour, in this area. 

My passenger enters talking (blood red flag) and pretty much won't stop for the rest of my time (we way way past flags now). She presents as a white woman in her mid-30s, and she's lost her Vape in a laundry accident, so this is an agitated person with an unplanned expense and likely having withdrawal issues. It's clear she's under some pain, and it's also clear that I'm going to get some of it. It's also clear that she is not, well, entirely in her right mind. 

Or possessing of any kind of filter.

About halfway to our stop, she starts to question the GPS and by quick extension, me. "Do you get paid more to make this longer?" and "You think I want to be in this car with you?" and "It's like being in a cop car!" and "I think I'd rather be in the cop car again!"

There's nothing performative or intoxicated about any of this. She is, frankly, in the top 1% of intimidating passengers because there's honestly no way to gauge how this is going to go, or if she's just going to take a swing at the back of my head while I'm driving. (See also: past stories about the scorpion and the frog).

We get to the 7-11, and I'm able to park directly in front of the door. After a half dozen "You want anything?" with me saying no thanks, she's off to the store. But not before telling me how weird I am, and why can't she ever get drivers who aren't weird. Because of course. (I'm weird, by the way, because I'm not saying much. Oxygen to fire, that is.)

Over the next ten minutes as I get to watch and silently chastise myself for not ending the ride and making her some other rideshare driver's problem, I watch her move back and forth across the store. Taking her mask off and on, piling an absurd amount of random crap on the counter, letting other simpler transactions complete before hers, because hey, the driver I just berated for 10 minutes has nothing better to do than attend my performance art piece.

Finally, she gets back in and is in better spirits because drugs (I'm guessing). I try to talk calmly to her a bit to ensure that the low star rating is only going to come from me, and after five minutes of making sure she has everything, she finally exits the car and my life, forever, because of the joy of giving a passenger three stars or less.

But not before she asks me about my vaccination status (triple, as soon as they let me on all jabs), and how she's not (of course!)... and that she works in a pharmacy.

Also, that she got me some things, because the five times I said no must not have registered.

Oh, and the piece de resistance?

She left the receipt in the bag. All of these essentials were bought with a SNAP card (the new food stamps).

So you are using our safety net to tip in candy and sugar water to rideshare drivers (who didn't want it, and said so, a lot).

Final take for me with ride... 51 minutes, 20 miles, $25. Plus plunder and story, of course...