When you are there, you might suspect you are, but your perceptions aren't level, and you fail Absent a great deal of statistically unlikely events, you are about to hand your chips over to someone else.
Recently, I've had personal experience with a loved one encountering a mental health episode. It's better now, and we are all grateful.
But the sense of helplessness that one has when in the presence is palpable. For this person, the issue manifested as paranoid delusions, which were, of course, impossible to refute with words or logic. You just had to be patient, wait them out, and have faith that it was not the new (ab)normal. It was one of the worst periods of my life, and like any of these cycles, I responded the same. A general numbness and trudging but persistent work to distract myself.
So, that's the prologue. Now, the ride story.
The ping comes in late in the evening on a day where I haven't made my target. Uber has dangled a surge price to keep me on the road, which has now faded. So I either take the next ride, regardless of condition or terms, or I lose the surge. I'm taking the next one unless it's completely outlandish. The ping comes in, and it's local. OK.
The pick up is supposed to be at a local 7-11. I get to the store and there is only one car in the parking lot, which I am presuming is the employee's. I wait for five minutes, no one shows or replies to my text, and I can cancel for a small fee. I do and head for home.
Two minutes later, the same name appears, but at an address. Oh... kay? Still have the surge price to chase, after all.
I roll up to the address, about five minutes from the 7-11. After a couple of minutes, the passenger makes his way to the car, and there's something... off... about him. He's a white guy probably in his 30s, tall, thin, dark clothing, and vibrating. Oh boy. He gets in the car, does not acknowledge my patter or the address confirmation (it's the 7-11), and off we go.
It is my standing practice to not make a lot of eye contact with passengers. There's no real reason for it, and if you are looking at your passenger, you aren't looking at the road. Over nine years, 39K+ rides, and relative safety and high tipping tells me this is a reasonable position to take.
So I can't and won't see if he's on the phone or not when he says what he says, which is... conspiratorial. Paranoid. Profane. Political. And all said at a pace that reminds me of listening to podcasts at accelerated speed, and at a volume that I can't quite ignore.
This is what real crazy looks like. Not theatric, not captivating, not a star turn from an actor with a meaty part, not well written or with memorable phrases. It's repetitive and upsetting and it makes you uneasy, because somewhere in the back of your primate brain you realize that everything about this person is wrong, and wrong might be contaigous. Or lead to unexpected outcomes.
Five minutes later, we're at the 7-11. He gets out and goes in and now I can't really trot out my excuse to not make eye contact, because there he is in the store. Through the glass I can see him vibrate, see his mouth move, but I can't see if there's anyone near him. This goes on for three minutes. I can't end the ride until five. I have no idea what he's doing, or why it's taking so long, or what is going to happen next. He leaves with a pack of cigarettes, gets into my car, and it's quieter for the five minutes back, but not quite quiet. At the drop, he leaves without incident. Still ranting.
Three stars or less means I never see him again, of course, and that seems like a no-brainer of a decision. The first rule of rideshare is get home safe, and this didn't feel that way at all.
On the other hand... he paid surge price (and a cancel fee), he didn't make me wait longer than most fares, and on some level, I don't want people like him to never get fares, because that hardly seems like it will help his situation. There could be any number of good and understandable reasons for the way he is, and, well? I didn't 3-star my loved one when they had their rough stretch.
I think about it for too long, and it sticks in me and sparks this post. I eventually did give him three, if for no other reason than it stuck in my head long enough to curtail my earnings, and that's not a practice to support.
A college professor back in the day in my political science course once attributed the quote of "human rights are for countries that can afford them" to a dictator. I haven't been able to track which one (Fidel Castro?), and since dictators tend to come outside of English as a first language (that's what we in poker would call a tell, folks), I'm not sure it was ever really said that way.
But the point applies. Compassion may also be for people who can afford it. Which doesn't really get my fare out of my head...
The ping comes in for a pickup at the train station, and I'm about 10 minutes away. A woman's name in all caps with a lower than usual rating has some yellow flags on it, but I need to bump my acceptance numbers and business is always light after the New Year. I accept the ride and start to make my way to the pick up.
Two minutes later, there's a text from the passenger. "I AM WAITING"
And yes, a kind reply would be to assume age, or newness to the platform, or that she just pressed send too fast and was going to give a location next.
But kindness is not where my inner (inner?) hack comedy writer lives, so I consider the following replies...
OH NOOO NOT THAT
Teleportation costs extra
I AM DRIVING
Tragic
Enjoy that
And record a voice note to my snarky family looking for other options, all while continuing to make my way to the pickup.
She cancels a minute later, adding a few bucks to the day's take. And, of course, the memories...
The pick up is suburban with a driveway, so I pull in. My passenger isn't waiting for me, so I k-turn and wait, and catch up on email. A few minutes later, my guy appears at the door and asks for assistance, as he's using a walker. I pop out, try and fail to fold down the device, and eventually just fold down the back seats of the hatchback and put him in the front seat. This is also where I'm getting a whiff of unwell about him, but the job is like that sometimes, and the drop off at a supermarket isn't too far away. Forward.
Since he's in the front seat, small talk is more likely, and I like the shifts where that happens more than the ones where it doesn't. I ask him if he's been in the area long, which is usually my entry into restaurant recommendations and the like, when he replies with something I wasn't anticipating. "No, I'm from Trenton, and I'm homeless."
I offer condolences before a particularly awkward silence, which he eventually ends with, "It's my cousin's fault."
Having nothing to add to this, we drive in silence for another half a minute, as I wonder if turning up music would be a little too obvious. Before I can decide, he adds, "It's OK. I will have my revenge."
Which somehow prompts me to reply, "Well, you know what they say, the best revenge is a life well lived..."
Which doesn't seem terribly helpful to a person who is, well, homeless.
He doesn't say anything the rest of the way, and neither do I...
In the last month or so, Lyft has started giving me little tidbits about passengers before I accept the ride. "Has tipped on 72% of rides." "Is usually waiting for the driver." "You gave them 5 stars last time."
My guess is that this is all I being done to nudge drivers into taking a higher percentage of rides (while, of course, paying less for those rides, because Enshittification Is Everything Now)... but the reality is that the passengers who behave worse than others are going to find themselves in a spiral of worse service.
And while that seems fine and justified on some level, on another... no.
Not to get too philosophical about this, but no one is 100% of anything. Some of the worst rated passengers I've ever had turned out to be just fine, but were victimized by a past driver. Some of the best rated passengers seem to get there purely from the power of buying their way out of bad behavior.
There's also this: judge not, lest ye be judged. Ridesharing is something of a microcosm of society on this, where rating every experience is somewhere on the spectrum of useless because AI slop and disregarding, or hyper-vigilance since the rating can end your income.
Meanwhile, this: both apps are now doing full-blown invasive telemetrics to determine how "good" of a driver you are. This is determined by harsh braking, speeding, etc. But here's a spoiler on that... if I really want my harsh braking scores to go down, it's easy. I just drive later in the day, when there is less traffic to inspire harsh braking. Or I run more yellow to red lights, since the app isn't bright enough to understand when protecting myself from tickets and collisions is the cause, rather than aggro tailgating and unsafe driving.
This is all, of course, a beta tech problem, and eventually the data will catch up and course correct, but in the meantime?
Everyone probably just needs to give each other a break.
If a passenger is a little late, stinky or unpolite, I need to chalk it up to the rest of their day, and not a need to punch down on the driver. If your ride isn't quite to your preference (depending on the passenger, I'm either too slow, fast, chatty or robotic)... maybe look in the mirror and question the importance of the complaint.
Or why, exactly, we want to live in a surveliiance state in the first place.
It's quarter to three in the morning, and I'm about $20 away from hitting the daily goal. It's been a busy shift, but not a very lucrative one, so it's been a long day. I get a ping in Princeton for a 20 minute ride south, no surge, that will get me fairly close to goal and home. Maybe even goal with a tip. Hope springs eternal.
The location is near a hotel, but the avatar that denotes the location of the passenger's phone isn't there. It's at a spur road off Route 1, about a tenth of a mile away. I drive to the avatar, pull over to the side, hit the hazards and roll down the window. It's not a particularly safe spot to stop, but the world works differently in the middle of the night for drunk people, and you accommodate from past experience.
My presumed fare is sitting off the side of the road against a property fence, some 100 feet away, and inconsolable. Appears to be a white woman, likely college age. Her companion, similar age male, who I presume called for the Uber on her phone, tells her the Uber is here. She won't move, won't stand, demands her phone, and screams about a person who has, in her opinion, shown herself not to be her friend due to her actions. It's very much a raging fit, at a volume that doesn't bode well.
He pulls out his own phone, calls someone else, tells them she won't get in the car.
This lathers, rinses and repeats for several minutes.
What I want to tell her, but will not because esoteric and off-putting, is that every person on the earth is descended from a very small group of humans who refused to die after a massive volcanic eruption killed all but a few hundred of us, huddling in caves for years, starving and scared, until it was safe to go one.
What I want to say, but will not because rude, is that I am doing a job, and until you get in the car, I am doing it for free. At a time when I can not do jobs for free, obviously, because I'm out in the middle of the night, by the side of the road, waiting for someone to stand up and get into a car.
What I want to do, but will not because not my place, is tell her that when you make your problems the problems of other people (let alone complete strangers and professional service workers)... that's a tell. About your boundaries, your empathy, your competence, your privilege. It's not a good tell.
I've waited three minutes. If I wait another two with her not getting in the car before I cancel the ride, I get a little less than four dollars. And if she actually gets up and gets in the car during this time, I get 20 more minutes of this, for no surge price, and likely no tip.
I check the app. There's surge price nearby.
The first rule of rideshare is a simple one: get home safe. I
The second rule of rideshare is also simple: we are doing this for money. A ticket from a cop for stopping here would ruin the entire day of work, or more. Not driving a fare at this hour, when fares are scarce, is also not advisable. Let alone fares that might pay surge price, or, well, get in the car.
I check the app for cancellation reasons. Here's the one: rider behavior. I cancel the ride, drive away, as the male yells for me not to. Surge price is activated, but no other requests come for the next 20 minutes, and I call it a night, resolving to...
Work a little more the next day to cover the shortfall.
Which I should be doing now, instead of writing this.
Forward. Honoring the stubborn ancestors.
The pick up is in New Brunswick, middle of the day, senior living building. An older gentleman with a walker makes his way to the car. It turns out that I'm taking him a casino about 45 minutes south in another state, so I make a little conversation. His game is poker, which I also play. We discuss various rooms in the area and what he likes and doesn't like about the game, and I give him the usual tips on saving a few bucks on rideshare rides, and why the price keeps changing and getting worse for him.
During the ride, he mentions how, in the room he's about to go play, he once got Royal Flushes in Texas Hold-Em on consecutive hands, and that ever since that blessed day, he's been called Royal Rich by the dealers there.
Now, the odds of hitting a royal are something like 650K to 1, and in decades of play, I've seen two live. Paid one, hit the other. Two in a row, according to the Internet query I just made while writing this post, are 422 trillion to one. But he's insistent, 82, and the passenger. Who am I to tell him he's wrong?
I drop him at his preferred spot and he tells me... the tip will be in the app.
There is, of course, no tip later. But you already knew that, yes?
The pick up comes from a motel near a truck stop and is going over state lines. Rough white guy, middle aged, portly, bearded, trucker hat. He's impressed by the amenities and wants to talk. It happens.
Several minutes in, the passenger asks me about my relationship with Jesus, which usually means he wants to talk about his relationship with Jesus, and how these must be the End Times. We do that while I defuse and distract, and after a good word or three, he's decided I'm a wise man, and it's time to go deep into his life, which means a confession that he's... going to the titty bar.
Because he just wants to smell it, you see, and those ladies are working, and is that so wrong? I know enough to weigh in with "Judge not, lest ye be judged", and he's wondering about whether the titty bar will have an ATM (seems likely, though not free).
Two minutes later, after a pump fake for a 7-11, I'm dropping him off, and he's greasing my palm with a folded 20, 10 and 5 -- $35 cash tip for a 15-minute ride. He later tips an additional $9 in the app. And as he looks me in the eye and thanks me for the ride, he says, "God bless America."
Ayup...
5-star, which is to say no reason to not pick them up again, pick ups for
Charlanda -- who was not a Pokemon
Santa -- who did not have the spirit of Christmas in them
Adolphus -- who was not a white supremacist
Bertha - who was not notable for her size
Someone with a T-shirt that read: IDK IDC IDGAF -- perhaps the most Wal-Mart thing to ever wear to a Wal-Mart, which worked, given that my pick up was at the Wal-Mart
A woman wearing red shorts and a half shirt at 11pm at night in 50-degree weather yelling "IT'S GODDAMN SUMMERTIME!" to no one in particular. She then saw me in my car, and yelled at a significantly lower volume, "HELLO"
It's not quite the same level of notable fare to passenger ratio that I got in San Francisco, but still, entertaining...
Alas, most NSFW.
5) Aphex Twin, Come to Daddy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ827lkktYs
4) Stan, Eminem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOMhN-hfMtY
3) The Kars4Kids jingle on repeat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8UV7SAhvG4
2) Bad Habit, The Offspring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJi2ZaF_MA0
1) Don't Give Up, Peter Gabriel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjEq-r2agqc
 |
| Lemme lick that off |
The pick up is at the train station, a mom and her son, accented English. They've been on trains all day, it's late, and there's no car seat. By the law, I shouldn't take them, but it's a 5-minute ride in a depressed area, I need a bunch of short rides to make a bonus with snow coming in, and I don't have the heart to say no to this woman and her little boy. We roll and I hope he'll stay in his seat with just a seat belt, but...
Nope!
Since he's not in a car seat and it's a novel experience for him, and he's three and male and the way he is, the next five minutes is... not exactly relaxing for any of us. He's not feeling safe and having a tantrum, his mom is trying to control him with a rising lack of patience, and he wants to control his environment... which means that my stuff in the seatbacks (cleaning supplies, hand sanitizer) and signage is Fascinating. I hit the child locks so he can't roll out into traffic, drive slow and safe as alays, and bore him into passivity. Not the first time this sort of ride has happened, to be candid.
As we make the drop on a quiet side street, the mom and son make their way out, only to wave back at me ten seconds later, before I pull away, because in all of the commotion, she's left her phone on the floor. I roll down my window to talk to her, find out what she needs, and in five seconds...
My guy has opened *my* car door several times. The mom apologies once more, and I coast away, quite thrilled that he is Her Problem and not mine...
I started New Year's Eve with a need for Lyft points to clear December's requirement, so the first four hours are spent on one platform, not optimizing for surge or prime areas, and... stink. Lots of rides to low density places, no surge, no tips, no conversation, and I can't wait to get to the points requirement. I think I'm there as my bladder is bursting and I'm local to my home, so I pull in, get relief and discover... nope, one point (out of 860) short. GAHHH. It clears soon after, and I pivot to two platforms...
Only to discover that Uber is also playing Screw the Driver games with surge areas that disappear on activation, using up my margins for avoiding inefficient rides, and by the time midnight rolls around, I'm staring down the barrel of nothing more than a better than average Tuesday.
After the clock strikes, my luck changes, and I find myself in a college area (short rides, high prices, full cars so I don't even really feel that bad about the surge, since they can spread the pain). After 90 good minutes of this, I'm in hailing distance of the daily goal, especially if I complete a Quest.
Uber Quests are "beat the clock" promotions where you get a bonus to complete a number of rides before a deadline. Having already completed two earlier and less profitable rounds, I'm now in the finale: 3 for $35, on top of the surge price and possible tips. In other words, nearly consulting rates. And I'm out of margin for being picky, so anything that comes down the pike is one I'm going to take. Rideshare Gods, activate! Form of... good stories for later!
The first ride takes me across the border to Pennsylvania. Leaving the app on means I won't get any fares until I get back across the state line, but I will accrue whatever surge price is happening on my way back. Which means my first ride will be, along with the second ride of the Quest, an extra twelve bucks... and it is, of course, stupid far away, and a shared ride for a single passenger, which will take me back into Pennsylvania to do the whole thing again. Joy.
I drive the 15+ minutes to Bordentown, a well-off little town south of Trenton that has a rather unfortunate police history of making sure that people from Trenton do not go there. It's not exactly my favorite place to be. I roll up on my pick up point, at which moment two male-female white couples try to enter. I have the option, at this point, to either ignore the rules and give these cheap chuckleheads what they want for less, to an area I don't want to go... or I can tell them no and cancel, while making no money. Most times, I just eat it and three-star the passenger, because the majority of shared rides are not doing so out of anything approaching eco-friendliness, but tonight... nope. I drive away as the meatiest of the guys showers me with profanity, and was I smiling to hear it? I'll leave that to the imagination.
The next fare is again 10 minutes away, but at least it's coming back 25 minutes in what's likely in state, and if I'm going to close out this quest by 4 am (gahhh), I'm going to have to be quick about it. So I roll on out to a remote home in a quasi-rural area, and get five (yes, one more than the the legal limit, and the women are going to sit on some guy, and they're all drunk) people piling into the hatchback. Joy. We roll on out as drunk people engage in comedy, because some people are like that when they drink, and they think I'm hilarious because I'm dryly adding in asides about their remarks. (OnlyFans, feet pics, artistic integrity and the like. Nothing all that novel.)
We get two minutes from the drop when the guy in the front seat announces he can stands no more, so I pull over as he expertly pukes on the side of the road. He's quick about it and seemingly not too burdened by food, so five minutes later I'm alone again, with the final ride of the Quest relatively close by, but 30+ minutes west. Two guys speaking what is I'm going to imagine is a Slavic language enter, with enough understanding of English to confirm the mission. By the time I've dropped them off, I've learned that English is the language for profanity, but not much else, and made an off-the-app second stop because they can't figure out the app to do such things. I drive back home alone for the better part of an hour on empty roads.
If you drive on New Years' Eve, this is what you can expect. Higher risks, higher rewards, and if nothing else, a lot of people getting home safe.
Final tally: 28 rides for $399, plus some progress towards a Lyft quest for the week, plus whatever tips trickle in the next day.
And, of course, the memories...
I'm an email and digital marketing consultant, and rideshare is the client of last resort. I tend to do a lot of it around the holidays, because most clients don't have a lot of needs then, and if billing isn't optimal, the bills still need to be paid. Besides, you often run into people who remind you to be grateful for what you have, even if it's less than what you thought it was going to be.
As a rideshare driver, I'm constantly questioning my choices. What areas I chose to work in, which rides I tale, when conditions are best, the time I should stop. It's endless.
So is, well, the code-switching. When a passenger enters the car, I confirm identity and destination, let them know about amenities, and wait for a response. If none or perfunctory is forthcoming, I respect that choice and complete the task. But if a conversation occurs, or the passenger seems like they are waiting to hear more, I wade in.
Last weekend, I'm working a not particularly well to do area. These can be more advantageous, since you are driving less distance to get your next passenger, and people with means are just less likely to be dependent on rideshare. But you do wonder if you are trading quality for quantity, especially when... the pick up is at a Wal-Mart, and the drop off is at a 1-star roadside motel.
But into every rideshare life, some 1-star motels must fall, so let's get it done.
The passenger texts that there will be two riders, and they are waiting for me at the door; good start. On entering, they compliment the amenities, and I go with the usual next gambit of offering tips for using the services. One of the passengers volunteers that they used to drive for a rideshare platform, so they were curious if any of the tactics I am going to share are new. We then talk about tactics, and I venture that if you are OK working with drunk people, it can be lucrative due to surge pricing.
I've learned, over the years, not to make a lot of (in some cases, any) eye contact with passengers. It can come off as confrontational, and my focus is on the road; that's where the deer, police, potholes, pedestrians, other drivers, are. So I haven't really looked at these folks, and, well, won't.
The passenger then contributes that when they drove, they weren't comfortable with drinkers. I shrug and note that it's easier for me, since my mother has been a bartender for so long, and I present male. That's the exact words I used, because I have known folks in transition, and well, why not. It's just accurate.
There's a pause, as if the passenger is wondering if they should say the next thing, and then they do. "Well, that's interesting. I'm trans, and I never thought of it that way."
Telling a complete stranger your orientation is, I suspect, a moment of trust. It can go badly, of course, or take the conversation into places they might not want to go. But my read of the situation is that this person is new to the area, encouraged by a moment of conversational inclusion, and not really looking to share their full journey with me. So I nod, don't change my demeanor or cadence or eye contact, and continue the journey, with points about the region that may be of interest, after confirming that they are, in fact, new to the area.
The conversation continues, the ride ends. The next day, I see a tip that doubles my take for that ride...
And, well, that's one ride where I do not question my choices.
We chat, and I give him the usual tips for rideshare passengers. It's friendly and we talk for a good part of the ride. It turns out he was in the room for his nephew's coming of age party, and while he was glad to be there for his people, there was no way he was going to be able to stay up late and partake in full foolishness. So he was very glad for my service, and to help him get out of there without complication.
At the drop, he exits, daps... and hands me the one dollar bills that he was, well, clearly going to use for another purpose that evening. Suspiciously crisp.
Not gonna lie; wasn't expecting that, I was kind of touched, and I felt a lot of kinship...
 |
| The Unhappy Hunting Grounds |
And then there are shifts like today.
Which included...
> An 18 minute pick up and ride, covering over 5 miles, that netted me... $5.16. With a 15-minute conversation that somehow did not result in a tip. Yeesh.
> A woman on a shared ride, with another passenger in the car, studiously ignorning her ringing phone. For about, oh, nine minutes. Not that I was keeping track. Or noting that the drop off was to the Zachary Arms apartment complex in Robbinsville, which is a place with (a) many unmarked speed bumps, and (b) many passengers who have inspired low star ratings.
> A man putting a woman in the car for a shared ride, and she doesn't speak English. The platform gave me another rider on the way, which caused her (I think? I don't speak Spanish) to freak out on the phone to her guy, who then proceeds to threaten my ranking in texts for, well, doing my job. As if I can pick up other passengers on the ride when it's *not* a shared ride.
Resulting in over 6 hours in the app for a gross (very) of... $101.
So the next time you pay too much for a rush hour ride?
Know that shifts like this one are *much* more common...
