Gratitude (And That's Right)

The other night, I'm working in Princeton during a surge time. I get a run of nice short rides with nice short people; good conversations and tips and nothing too far away from each other. It's going well. Which is when I get a ping from 17 minutes away, in Trenton.

Well, in every life a little Trenton must fall, and I've had many good shifts in that town. I know the potholes, I know the area, short rides happen and it's also in a surge zone. The 17 minutes of dead time from now until then isn't great, but it's also not avoidable. Away we go.

On pick up, after several minutes of waiting and it's about an hour before when I want to shut down for the night... I discover that either the platform failed to tell me it was a long ride, or the passenger changed it later. So eat 70 minutes to Wilmington, Delaware, with the added bonus of (a) the ap does not work for me in Delaware, (b) the passenger is neither nice nor tipping, and (c) yeah, this blows. By the time I finish the drop and do the backtrack, it'll be for substantially less than average per hour, and below average hours? I'm not a fan of them.

The next day, I start things in a streak time, which is when you have to do three in a row in the same ap, no matter what, to activate the bonus. Once again, the ap does not warn me for overly long ride (different ap!), and now I find myself in who the hell knows where I am upper central New Jersey, where no one needs rideshare, the roads are all one lane, it's raining and the drivers all are in aggro SUVs and driving me off the road. I wound up eating the hour and forgetting the streak, and doing a lot less with that ap than usual for the rest of the day. It's important to show the algorithm that's in no way working for the best interest of the driver that there are consequences for poor performance. (OK, it's not.)

The trick when things are going downhill is to try to practice gratitude. The car's running. Good hours exist. Later on in the shift, I'll get taken to the Philadelphia airport, get tipped handsomely by the kind passengers, then wind up getting a $27 surge price on a $4 ride. For a few hours there, I was making a lot more than I make for doing my other hustles, for work that I often prefer doing, truth be told. (Dealing with some of my clients is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.)

But these surprise super long rides that the aps are supposed to warn you about, and aren't?

Don't make the act of gratitude very easy.

Play me out, Manhattan Men...