Hijacked

Rubber Stamped 

So this was a new and terrible experience...

Shared ride, no surge, passenger gets in the car, and I confirm his address as a supermarket in town. It's a 10 minute ride, and he's pretty ripe and pawing through the breath mints and cough drops as if he's mining for gold. Good thing they are all wrapped, and I'm not always in need of someone who can carry a conversation. We drive in silence... until I get to his destination.

Which is when the freak out happens.

It seems this isn't the right supermarket, which is now met with threats to call the cops (um, for what now?) and he's not leaving the car, and I have to take him somewhere else.

You know, for free, with no GPS navigation because the app thinks he's done.

He also doesn't know the address of the other place. Joy.

I also do this hustle out of the desire to drive people around for free. Especially when they are rude, reek, and hostile, and threatening my rating. (As if the app is going to take the word of this winner over an experienced driver, but you never know.)

So I logged out of the app, asked Google for other supermarkets in the same brand near me, and drove him to the closest one, which is 2 miles and 5 tense minutes later.

He's satisfied and staggers off. Big winner, right? Alpha male got me good?

Well, no, because after driving a few blocks away and having my nerves settle, I fired off a message to the service along with my one star rating. I got a form letter back, but it promised an account review and possible suspension for my hijacker.

When you do 10,000 rides, they can't all be winners, folks...

My Tight Five

Tip Your Server

Tight Five is a phrase from the world of stand up comedy, where comedians have their sharpest bits cut down to speed sets in exposure gigs. It's basically the same as an elevator pitch in business; your greatest hits, as it were.

And, well, it exists in ride share as well. At least for me. At the risk of seeming a lot less spontaneous than I actually am, please welcome yourself to... the A material.

> "I'm taking you to ... " Base level conversation, because when I don't check your drop point, Disaster Looms.

> "There's water in the seatback pocket, and cough drops and breath mints..." This is accompanied usually by a little bit of pantomime and manipulation, because the dish isn't secured and I don't want you to wear it.

> "Where are you from, since no one's from here?" - This nearly always worked to get a snort in the Bay Area, where 4 out of 5 people to enter the car where from Southern California, Chicago, Canada, New York, Florida, Texas, or India. That number dropped a lot when you got into the East or South Bay, but it still held pretty well. On the East Coast, I don't break this one out very often.

> "Do you take Lyft fairly often? I can throw you a tip or three." I've driven nearly 10,000 rides as I write this, so if I don't have tips by now, I'm probably doing something wrong. Most of the time, people say yes and most of the time, I tell them something they didn't know.

> "What do you do?" It's not news to anyone who has ever worked in sales and marketing, but people generally like to talk about themselves. Especially if you seem interested and/or not trying to sell them something. (What am I trying to sell you, when you are in my car? Good will in case my route isn't perfect, or we run into unforeseen traffic. And if you are so moved as to tip, then the sale is more obvious.)

> "Would you like some recommendations?" I don't know why people think that de facto cab drivers have all of the in the know tips on restaurants and cultural attractions, especially when the vast majority of my time is spent, well, not getting out of the car to experience the things that I've taken you to. But I guess we've all seen enough movies where the cab driver has advanced the plot, and maybe part of your great Tourist Experience is to do the thing the cabbie said. (I have some, by the way. Especially for SF and Philly.)

> "That reminds me of a podcast..." I'm in the car a lot, folks. I'm listening to a lot of NPR to try to keep my mind occupied, and I'm also prone to drawing causality lines from work, past experiences, family, etc.

Oh, and if you don't want anything but the first two?

Just pray to your phone, and all will be calm.

But probably a lot less fun for both of us, really...

Lyft Work: East Coast vs. West Coast

Well, No, Not This Either

Lyft work has been my second job for most of the time that I've been in the platform. Most, sadly, but not all, as I work in a field (online advertising) and sector (start ups) that occasionally encounter clear air turbulence. But this has given me an interesting experience in what it's like to do the hustle in dramatically different settings.

When you Lyft in the Bay Area, you encounter...

> A ton of tech workers taking shared rides. In SF proper, they don't tell you the names of the companies they work for, because there don't want to seem like shills or nerds or whatever. In the greater San Jose area, they are ready to sing the fight song. (No, seriously.)

> Tourists. Well, obviously, especially if you are anywhere near Fisherman's Wharf. ){hilly gets some, but not nearly in the same number as SF.)

> Day drinkers in costume. Between Pride, Halloween, Santacon, Bay to Breakers, Hunky Jesus / Foxy Mary (don't ask), Carnivale, St. Patrick's Day... well, you don't have an alcohol problem if you are in costume, right? You're just being festive!

> Predictably bad roads (in that the East Bay is always, always, always worse)

> Inexplicable traffic delays. There's just too many people, spread over too little space.

When you Lyft in the Greater Philadelphia and New York City regions, you encounter...

> A lot of praying to the phone. Even more than the West Coast.

> Much more de facto health care work. Rideshare is the new ambulance, folks. For obvious reasons.

> Long random rides. It's much less likely to be a commuting tool here.

> Lower ride density. In the Bay Area, there's just more people and more drivers. Here, I routinely run into 10 minute drives to pick up passengers without a cancel. In the Bay Area, over five minutes was rare.

> About a 20% drop in net wages, which is mitigated somewhat by cheaper gas and lower costs for things like auto repairs and car washes, road food and drinks, and supplies (I stock my car with water, mints and cough drops)

It's also, well, less fun. But that may speak more to my situation than my passengers, honestly.

Seen and Not Unseen

Well, No, Not Like This

It's a 50-degree day with rain and wind in San Francisco's Castro district. I'm running a shared ride on relatively low energy, having already done the hustle for too many hours that week. After dropping off several passengers, I'm left with one woman in the front seat, and she's praying to her phone. I don't usually disrupt prayers, so the car is quiet.

As I'm waiting for a light to change, I see... well, dude is naked. Well, almost entirely naked. He's wearing a red swimmers' cap and sandals, and nothing in between. White dude, probably in his '40s or '50s, no big tattoos or piercings that I can see on my very cursory glance.

Now, naked in the Castro isn't all that unusual; it is the Castro, for heaven's sake. But normally there's *context*, some event or group or protest or *something* better than I Just Teleported Out Of A Naked Pool.

And I want to ask my passenger if she knows if there's something special going on today, or just to acknowledge that I'm not hallucinating this from too many hours behind the wheel. It's not as if anyone else is paying him any mind.

But it's creepy if your driver is like "Hey, lady, lookit the nekked guy!", right?

So we drive on in silence... until three blocks later, when I just have to know.

"Hey, did you also..."

"Yeah, yeah, I saw him."

"What the hell, right? I mean, it's cold outside..."

And we had a fun five minute conversation after that, until I dropped her off.

So thanks, Naked Teleporting Swimmer!

Which is a sentence which has probably never been written before, and I really hope I don't have to ever write again...

When The Rideshare Gods Smile Upon You

Hi, Ron!

I get a ping on a Saturday night in the Bay Area a few weeks ago. The pick up is at a nice hotel, and the profile picture is of an older white dude. I arrive, find a place to pull over, and press the button that tells me where I'm going...

and it's just under the limit where Lyft warns you it's a crazy long ride, but it's a crazy long ride. Over two bridges to the far recesses of the East Bay, and I'm *very* tempted to cancel the ride and get back to shorter and easier fares, especially with Saturday night surge pricing and a ride threshold to reach before I qualify for bonus pay.

But, well, not how I roll and bad for the karma... so I wait and in walks Ron here.

Who turns out to be, well, just about the best passenger I've ever had, at least in terms of mutual interests.

It turns out that Ron is Ron Adams, an NBA coaching lifer and current assistant coach for the world champion Golden State Warriors. He's also just exited from a charity poker tournament, where he's donkeyed off his chips in a big hurry because he just realized he's double-booked back in the East Bay.

So he's thrilled to find a Lyft that will take him where he's going, and also more than willing to spill the beans with his driver, who is a lifelong NBA fan and all too happy to soak up his knowledge of what the game is like now, how players are managed, who the real competition is in the West, and so on, and so on.

If I were still the sportswriter and journalist that I was 20 odd years ago, this would have been a strong scoop moment, and the start of a long and useful friendship with a cultivated source. 

Instead, it's just more proof (not that I needed it) that when you are on the right side of the Rideshare Gods, good things happen.

Thanks for making my night, Ron.

And Go Dubs! (But not if they are playing my Sixers.)