A Grim Grape Soda Epiphany

I drop off my fare on the Princeton campus, and the app has me set up for the next one. I have nine rides to go on the shift to clear the bonus and claw back a couple of hours away from the hustle. As I head towards the road to get to the next step in my shift, I pull out a large bottle of grape soda to whet my whistle. 

Which, well, turns into a geyser in my lap. 

I open the door and try prevent some of the drink from hitting me and my poor car, and reach for the car towel, paper towels and antiseptic wipes that are always within reach. (It's a small car, and I'm an organized soul.) Within I few seconds, I've limited the damage and blotted, and I'm soaked and sticky and not happy in the least. 

At this point, I had the following options. 

1) Cancel the upcoming ride and spend a chunk of time cleaning up. I won't be dry by the end of it, but I won't be sticky. 

2) Delay the upcoming ride and do the same. 

3) Cancel the ride and go home (it's 10-15 minutes away) and change my clothes. 

4) Just, well, drive. 

I chose option 4, because 

 a) It's dark out and no one's going to notice my stained pants. 

b) I have 3/4s of a tank of gas, and I'm not going to have to get out of the car until the end of the shift, at my home. 

c) I just want to, well, get the damn shift done and the bonus activated. 

Three hours later, I'm done, and the next day, there's no evidence of the explosion. Worked out. 

But not without a cost, really. 

I tend to dress the part of a business professional. Collared shirt, shave, not pushing any boundaries. It helps to drain the energy out of people who have been overserved, and I think it leads to a little bit of a more controlled environment. I've always thought that this was part of the reason why other rideshare drivers, when I've talked to them, always have more colorful or out of control stories than mine. 

But, well, maybe it's just luck, and no one really notices or cares if the driver's a mess, honestly. 

Drive on.

Thoughts On Dirt Bike Rallies

Two Wheels Good, Four Wheels Bad

More and more this year, especially as colder weather didn't arrive and people started putting their money in outdoor fun, I'd find myself surrounded by dirt bikes, ATVs and 3-wheelers in urban environments. To the point of several times per week, which is to say, enough to not get too freaked out about, but more than enough to notice.

I get why people do it. It looks like fun, there's safety in numbers, it must seem empowering as hell, and running a dirt bike is truly cheap on gas. I also can't imagine that there's a lot of expense in upkeep or, well, insurance. Assuming you have the ability to hide that thing when it's not in use, you're probably loving it. Especially if you are the kind of person who just needs to share your music with several zip codes at once. Such a positive force in the community, you are!

It's just, well, not particularly pleasant to be around for people who aren't on the bikes. Loud noises are increasingly likely to provoke a startle reflex, your passenger is likely to get nervous and/or make a not particularly helpful comment about the people doing the activity, and you get very paranoid about any possibility of a lane change. And, well, ride share driving is driving that requires more lane changes than any other kind of driving, honestly.

Couple this with the rally's inherent likelihood of disregarding traffic lights and rules under the enlightened guise of Who Is Going To Stop Us, and the seemingly inevitable rise in fatalities and injuries, and well...

It can't be great for the property values, is all I'm saying. 

It's also not real great for the community or rideshare passengers, because Dear Passenger and Reader...

When I see that stuff, I go to Last Ride Mode and get the hell out of there. No matter what kind of demand is going on. The hustle isn't bringing in enough for that level of stress, and I'm not doing this because I love high risk behavior as part of my grind.

Left for the reader as an intellectual exercise... is there any real difference between dirt bikes and guns? Because I'm not seeing it. Both endanger the public for the life choices of the individual, both serve a limited but highly dubious purpose, both are Fun Toys for people who should probably not be investing so much in Fun Toys, and both show that the user cares more (only?) about their lives, not the lives of people around them.

You'll also never be able to convince those that have them that they are a bad idea, so maybe go after the people that make them, whoopsie doodle, individual Constitutional rights, and race to the bottom as people make choices for them and them alone. (They also both come with a Not All tiresome subset of people who seem to think that the actions of a few Bad Actors are no reason to Slippery Slope and yeah, I'm too tired to finish the bad faith argument that basically resolves to I Wanna And You Can't Stop Me.)

Oh, and when Dirt Bike Rider is also packing heat, or Regular Driver shows theirs to Dirt Bike Rider as part of demographic tensions? That's when the end of civilized society is even more apparent, yes?

Why My Rating Is Going Down

As the pandemic fades for the fourth time -- dear God in heaven, let it be the last -- and anti-maskers become more and more militant, the plain and simple fact is that driver ratings are at risk. Probably not just mine. Here's why.

1) I can reject a non-compliant passenger. But I'm probably not going to.

It costs me money and folks, I rideshare for money.

So if I take a passenger who isn't wearing a mask, and then note it in the post-ride comment... well, the passenger is going to know. And likely take vengeance.

I've had passengers lie and tell the platform that I wasn't wearing a mask -- and yes, that's never happened, not once. I'm extremely obsessive about this sort of thing. But, well, tit for tat seems to be a thing for a lot of folks.

2) Prices are all over the place.

And, well, that doesn't lead to happy passengers. (How could it? And yes, some people seem to think the driver can summon surge pricing. As if.)

3) Pick up times are all over the place.

The pandemic, you might have heard, really took a big number of ride share drivers off the road. Which means that there are times when it seems like I'm the only provider for dozens of miles at certain hours of the night... and if the passenger has been waiting for a really long time, a disturbing amount of them will decide the driver must be to blame someone. (Yeah, this doesn't make sense.)

Fun fact: if the passenger gives me three stars, or vice versa, we won't be paired together again. So maybe don't be so quick with that decision, especially if you aren't finding a lot of coverage as is...

4) Drivers aren't happy. 

Maybe I'm just projecting, but my hourly take has been more inconsistent than at any time in the past five years of doing this hustle. Part of that is that the tipping classes -- riders where we used to touch luggage but don't any more, people wining and dining, airport rides -- were disproportionately cut by the pandemic. Add that to the longer drive times and angrier passengers, and you can see why it's just not a good time.

5) Passengers aren't happy.

Again, maybe I'm projecting -- but my current ratings have 2-3X more unhappy people (OK, 2-3X a very small number) who don't give me the five stars... but also won't give a reason why. Leading us back to point #4...

Why (Platform Name Here) Is Bad For Drivers

 I drive for Lyft as well as Uber, and they both have serious flaws for drivers. Let's get into it.

Lyft

> Dangerous and annoying switchoffs. Lyft likes to switch the passenger on the driver for long pick ups, which leads to an awful lot of last-second direction changes for the driver. (And yes, I'm experienced enough to not just do whatever fool thing the GPS tells me to do, but it's still a situation where you've got to suddenly change lanes and course, or risk more unbilled time.)

If you are inexperienced or prone to just following the dictates of the GPS, this can be a serious lack of chill... but there's something else involved that's a real drag here.

> Your time is not your own. Lyft actively tries to prevent the driver from knowing where they are going, or how long the ride is going to be, regardless of whether or not the driver has earned the right to know that information through high status and performance. Those switch-off rides give the driver a passenger that could be a completely different direction and time duration, so planning to do anything in a shift other than give your entire life over to Lyft... really isn't a thing. Which leads to...

> You are going to drive in many more unfamiliar neighborhoods. As a rideshare driver, I like to know my area as much as possible. The roads in central New Jersey are not great and there's a very large amount of deer in the less developed areas. Parts of the state have heavy industry and trucking, and knowing where those folks are going means I can get out of their way a lot faster. If I know a road and the patterns of where the deer come from, I'm just safer -- especially when I'm driving at night, which is my preferred work time. Drive for Lyft, and you're going to take more bridge tolls, dodge more deer and trucks, and feel much less in control.

> You're going to have to play (and eventually lose) Lyft Roulette. Lyft incents the driver with streak bonuses that require the worker to complete each ride that is given to them to qualify -- even if that ride takes them hours out of their way late in the shift. Which is exactly what happened to me the other night when my final passenger of a 3-ride shift took me two hours due west into Pennsylvania Amish country, where I got to manage a flash flood and horses and buggies plodding around in the middle of the night. Oh, and an uncompensated toll road back. I've had worse times doing ride share, but not recently.

> More outlier people. Lyft passengers are friendlier, until they are really not. Lyft passengers tip more, until they really don't, and use you for multiple stops and de facto personal servant work. Lyft passengers chat more, until they engage in wildly over the top personal drama where you'd just wish they'd go back to praying to their phone. Lyft passengers ask for chargers and masks more, and I don't carry every type of charger known to humanity, or always have masks in stock for short rides to folks who don't seem likely to tip...

You are getting some folks who really want to be conscious consumers. You also get some folks who have been tossed off the market leader. There's way less middle here.

Uber

> Super long connect times. The downside of the lack of Lyft switch offs is that Uber is much more likely to give you 15 to 25 minute drives to get passengers. There's some pittance money involved in those rides, but it's really not worth it.

> Bonus dependence. Whether or not you have a good week with Uber is mostly dependent on whether or not you activate the Quest bonus, and those Quests are call your shot levels that... can go right out the window with bad weather, other priorities, a long drive or two, or those super long connect times. I've had days where I knew I wasn't going to make a mark and just regretted doing any work at all for them.

> Highly deceptive and discouraging surge zones. If I activate in a surge zone, I rarely wind up with a ride surge that was what was advertised, or in the area. Usually, it's less than half. So you feel like a chump for being there, or that other drivers must be getting the better treatment. It's extremely distracting and frustrating.

> Single state coverage. As a New Jersey driver who lives ten miles from the state border with Pennsylvania, I get pulled over the line fairly often... and with Uber, that means I'm just being taken into a massive dead zone where the only thing I can do is put my tail between my legs and dead drive back. It doesn't exactly lead to a great service experience for the passengers, either. Lyft lets me work PA. (Now, whether I want to... see that road to the Amish above.)

> Wildly frustrating destination mode. I work nights, locally, and will chase bonuses all the time... which means that keeping my acceptance rates high enough to see time and distance is a very high challenge. It's really easy to have a lot of unlucrative hours with this platform.

Well, That Happened

A small collection of recent experiences that I've had as a rideshare driver.

> The pick up comes for a suburban house. I get a married couple in their '50s, going to a live music venue / nuisance bar on the waterfront. They are going there on the behest of their daughter, who is there and thinks they will like the band. The passenger is a firefighter of 30-odd years, and we don't have an awful lot in common, but the gig requires a certain amount of codeswitch. 

As they are leaving the car, the wife says to the husband, "Don't leave your gun in the car." My man makes a d'oh like noise and moves on, and later tips.

I live in America. I've done rideshare off and on for five years. Over 19,000 people have been in the car. It's likely not the first time that someone in the car has been packing heat.

Just the first time I've, well, known.

> Another passenger, this one masking and not liking it. "So, are you a big vaccine guy?" With attitude. I give it a moment, and with a little bit of tender in the voice, reply, "Of course. My wife is high risk, and I love her very much. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I knew that I gave her a virus."

It had a couple of advantages. It took down the snotty tone. It changed what could have been an awkward conversation. And it was also true, which made it easy to say. (And it distracted her, I think, from a quick re-lowering of the windows.)

> I've been doing more later at night, because several of my clients in the main hustle have gone dark. This mostly involves working in Trenton, the state capital of New Jersey and a place that has, well, a great deal of challenges.

As I'm heading south on Route 1, I steer the car through a debris field from a recent accident. Police and fire haven't arrived yet, and I'm not exactly an EMT, so I just move on through it to get my fare to their destination. The next ping involves me heading back up Route 1 on the north side, about 10 minutes after the drop off. One of the cars involved is flipped over and burning so hard that I can feel the heat on the other side of the road. Still no police or fire, and no word about it on the news the next day. Things happen in Trenton.

> As the weather has been nice and many people in the area have decided to make a Polaris or dirt bike purchase, you often find yourself in the midst of road rallies. It's surprising how quickly this just becomes part of the scenery, honestly -- but you can imagine how it might not do much for the property values. (Also, the older I get, the more I want to spread the false meme that people who play their music very loudly for the benefit of others are, in fact, advertising their availability and interest in remarkable and unconventional sexual acts. Kind of like the old-school color of a man's handkerchief.)

> Drunk passengers on what they claim to be their first Uber ride (it's 2021; how is this possible?) ask several times if I ever have to deal with (profanity redacted). 

Thought, but not said, "Well, there's this ride..."

> Pick up from the Trenton train station. Single woman, with luggage, weeping and inconsolable. An aunt has been taken off life support, and the last train has left. There's nothing to do for her but take her back to her apartment... but at the risk of having things go worse, and because I can't help but try to help, I say something to the effect of the following.

My people, the Irish, have a saying -- that everyone passes twice. The first is mechanical, the second, the last time someone says your name. And that while I don't know my passenger or her aunt, the depth of her feeling for her loss tells me that she will be with her loved ones for a long time. In the cold light of day, it's trite, but late at night in an intimate setting, it helped.

I got her home and did two things that I haven't done since the start of the pandemic: carry her luggage and give her a hug. And feel just a little bit better about working a side gig late at night.