If you are a new driver

> Start the app in daylight, in an area you know well, in a time frame of several hours before you have to do anything else.

> Clean the car as if anyone who is getting into it could end your gig. They can.

> Deactivate the app as soon as you get a passenger, i.e., do not accept next ride. That's for experienced drivers who are going to take a lot of rides. That's not you, not yet. Walk into the deep end, rather than dive in.

> Drive as if you are either transporting an infant or afraid of police. Yes, there is a sense that passengers might get annoyed if you are slow, but most are much more worried about you being fast, if you catch my drift.

> Don't run yellow and red lights, don't speed more than 5-10% more than the posted limit, signal everything and take turns and braking gently. Imagine anyone in your car might have a hidden health issue, basically. You also don't get to say what you think of other drivers.

> Match and mirror the conversational level of your passenger. Error on the side of less speech. Beyond confirming the passenger and destination, this can be a quiet gig. Do it that way to start.

> Don't eat in the car. If you do it, so will the passengers. The gig doesn't pay well enough to involve cleaning up after other people.

> If your passenger is rude -- on the phone the entire time, loud, rolling down windows without asking, playing media without headphones -- accept that it's 2023, this is the rule now, and your rating matters a lot more than theirs.

> Don't chase surge price. It leads to bad driving decisions and anxiety. You are getting an intro bonus for a reason, and it's because chasing surge comes later, when you have a feel for it, and the time and area that you are driving in.

> Don't make eye contact. The roads are bad, the passengers don't like it when you eye them down, and wildlife, bad drivers, potholes and more are not going to be in your rear view mirror.

> If you feel unsafe with a passenger, remember that the app has their phone number and that 99.99999% of rides complete without incident, even in the sketchiest of neighborhoods. After they are gone, three star them so you don't have to see them again. De-escalate. Also, carry no cash.

> Don't take it too seriously. You are competing with the driving experience of other drivers, many of whom are new to the country and area, not worrying too much about customer service, or driving to maximize revenue at the expense of passengers. Just by reading this blog entry for this long, I already know you are going to be better than them, and that the job is going to become very dull very quickly, but a better than nothing source of income.

> Set time limits and stick to them. The apps are going to tell you its busy now, or that there is surge price, or that you are so close to a goal, etc. Blow that nonsense off. Set time limits and keep your sanity; otherwise, it's an endless video game that you will play until you are not safe.

> Be safe. Cancel rides if you have to, don't drive when and where you might be uncomfortable (i.e., bar closings, airports) and ease into it. One of the few joys of this gig is the flexibility. Don't let the voice in your head telling to do more (the one the app is desperately trying to stimulate) drive. That's your job.

Good luck!

"Where are you going?"

 It's time for a fun (fun!) reader poll for a hypothetical (as if!) situation.

You have chosen to dine at an Appleby's. You have also indulged in drinking. Sensibly, you have summoned a rideshare car. Your driver arrives, and you head towards the door, only to discover that much of what you have paid for is about to make an unwelcome repeat visit. You make it to the bushes and decorate with force, all while clutching your leftovers. 

Your rideshare driver has witnessed all of this.

What's your next move?

1) Tell the driver that you are ill and will have to cancel until you feel more secure in your containment.

2) Cancel the ride from your app without talking to the driver, because vomiting in front of a stranger is cringe.

3) Hold a single finger up to the driver to let them know that you will be totally fine in just one minute, and that they should be completely OK with transporting your noxious self.

(votes tabulating)

Containment has failed, and you are repeating your earlier performance on the same very unfortunate bushes. Your driver has silently mouthed "Aw, Hell No", canceled the ride, and has put his car into reverse. Choose your next action!

1) Be grateful that the driver did the cancel, since that did not cost you anything, and take a breath. After all, if you had gotten into the car and had a moment, that can cost hundreds of dollars and get you delisted from a platform.

2) Use your app to summon another car, with the hope that by the time they get there, you'll be able to clean yourself up and get home.

3) Stagger across the parking lot to curse at  the driver and ask "Where are you going?", because the idea that a driver might not want to take your sparkling self for a 15-minute ride in the immediate aftermath of a technicolor yawn is just something that you can not, for a moment, fathom.

Thanks for playing!

On driving a certain profession

If you work weekend afternoons as a rideshare driver long enough, I guarantee that you will have the following experience.

An attractive woman in no stage of prepartion to meet the world will enter your car. There will be surface pleasantries, but nothing in the way of real conversation, or for any real length of time. 

They will have a signficant bag of hard to determine stuff. 

You won't ask about the bag.

And you will take them in broad daylight to an empty strip club.

You are in this moment invisible, have always been invisible, will always be invisible. And a much younger part of yourself, deep inside the older husk, will react as if they are children at the zoo. Lookit this! Can you believe it? It's like we're in an art movie!

The older you, of course, will just drop this fellow member of the working class in front of their job site. They will appreciate you not staring, and also seem a little antsy over how you are not staring. They'll tip, but not to excess. And you'll get back to your day with a blase quickness, because any ride you give more than once just doesn't phase you very much...

The illusion of job security

One of the things that can seem attractive about the gig economy is that you are your own boss. Set your own hours, stop or start whenever you want, no manager. 

Freedom. 

This is, of course, utter and complete horseflop. 

In every way, if only because setting your own hours means you will set many more of them to make the same money, and stopping and starting whenever you want implies that you are only doing this for Bonus Money. (Have you ever had Bonus Money, Dear Reader? Did it spend differently, or was it almost immediately turned into the same critical resource as Non Bonus Money? I'm betting the latter.)

Every passenger holds the destruction of the driver's professional livelihood in their hands, and that's why you are (a) seeing fewer and fewer drivers in many major markets, and (b) finding more and more drivers submitting everyone involved to constant video survalliance. And if you are a driver that thinks you might get different treatment from a platform due to your ratings, or your years of service, well... nope. I learned that first hand tonight.

As I'm backing out my driveway to start my first shift in a week (personal stuff and the day job has been intensive), I start to set up both platforms on my phone... only to get a message from Uber that says my account has been suspended. Why? Well, it seems that a passenger has reported that I was driving while inebriated, and that they need to investigate.

Now, a few points about this.

Dear Reader, I'm in my '50s. I've driven for rideshare platforms since 2017. I have arond 28K rides completed at this point, between Lyft and Uber. I have 5.0 ratings in both. I have never driven while inebriated. I have never been cited for driving while inebriated. I drink, on average, once or twice a month, usually while playing poker with my friends. On those days, I don't drive. I also haven't done a ride for Uber for six days, which means that any complaint would have been in the pipe for a very long and not terribly effective time.

But even if you don't know me, don't believe me and want to give passengers all of the power... honestly, how likely is it that a driver with those numbers just goes rogue? Wouldn't you be more wary of not losing that guy as a driver?

So what's really the most likely situation here? Well, folks, drivers rate passengers, and truth be told, I rate folks a lot. If the passenger smells bad, makes me wait, is loud and proud with the volume on their phone or conversation... I'm not giving five stars. If you take a shared ride and fill my car with unpaid passengers, I will still take you where you want to go, because you outnumber me and the first rule of rideshare is don't get you or your car hurt. But I will three star or lower to make sure you can't do it to me twice, and I suspect one of these fine upstanding passengers decided to meet my true assessment with spite.

Either that, or they are actively trying to cull drivers because maybe they just don't want to bother with secondary markets, like where I live.

What *should* a platform do in this situation? Well, if I was running the business, I'd... check the goddamned numbers. I'd investigate first, suspend later -- if at all. I would error on the side of the asset that's going to drive hundreds of dollars of revenue per shift into the company, rather than some individual, likely low value, passenger. In short, I'd run the business with nuance and discretion, rather than a blanket policy that tells the essential (for now, robots are coming) part of the business that they do not matter. 

Uber didn't do any of that for me tonight. What they did do, instead, was send me a great deal of cut and paste boilerplate that puts in no uncertain terms the idea that they will brook no dissent, pay no attention to math, or give a damn about loyalty.

So Lyft got a full shift from me tonight instead. And another tomorrow, even if Uber reinstates and apologizes, and possibly even if they are showing higher surge pricing and some other promotion to try and win me back.

Because the *only* good part about this dystopian nightmare of work is that you get to treat the platform the same way they treat you.

But only so long as there are two of them...

(Update: Account reinstated without explanation or reimbursement, but with the same self serving cut and paste policy bullspit. Asshats.)