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.)