Silent Running

The downsides of gig work are many, but the most obvious one is a lack of paid sick time. I tend to have a reasonable constitution and steady habits, so an illness has to be pretty potent to get me off the road. And ever since the pandemic, the idea of making someone else ill with whatever I've got has been a big, well, no.

So this weekend, I picked up a bug, bombed it with meds and felt good enough to work and not be contagious... but I've lost my voice. This isn't the first time that I've had this happen, due to a youth spent singing in rock bands, but it is new to this age of life, which involves rideshare.

There is nothing like the absence of an ability to make you focus on that ability, and you may be surprised by how much conversation happens in the course of a shift. If nothing else, the reflexive action of confirming name and address, as well as the presence of amenities or use of the trunk, is off the table... and if your passengers have a conversation that ties into your particular interests, or with obvious errors that you might be able to correct or inform, it's a kind of mild torture.

But for the most part, being forced to be silent as a driver is just the way this driver is choosing to do the work on this day, and some passengers won't even notice, especially if they are wearing headphones or on a phone conversation during the call. I suspect it's generally a negative practice for inspiring tipping, but small sample sizes do not inspire confidence.

Because the Rideshare Gods are funny, or depending on how you look at things, merciful... the shift that had the most Silent Running was, of course, during a good amount of surge price. Can't talk? Have fares that want to. Can talk? Have fares that don't. Leading to one of the last ones of the night, a multi-stop affair where I've got so much to say to the last passenger that, at the end of the ride, I'm furiously jotting down contact info on a post-it note.

Freedom of speech, folks. Pops up in the weirdest places.