See Through

The pick up comes from a bar as the Monday night football games are ending, so surge price is picking up a touch. My passengers are a pair of guys who have been enjoying themselves and have a 15-minute ride back to their hotel. One of the guys gets in the front seat, which isn't great in a pandemic, but it's warm enough out to get the windows down, and I'm triple-vaxxed and double-masked. I steel myself for a significant amount of time of drunk guy talk and get moving.

Three minutes into the ride, the passenger in the front seat isn't happy, as he can't find his phone. The guy in the back seat is paying for the ride and not thrilled with the extra time and expense, but a lost phone is downright debilitating in the modern age. I turn around and go back to the bar. When we get there, a friend of the drunk guy is outside waving his phone, but insists that drunk guy comes back into the bar for some reason. Two minutes later, he staggers out again and away we go. 

Since we're back at the bar and I'm facing a different direction, I head off towards the nearby highway to try to shave a minute or two off the ride. We're about to turn on the road when my front seat passenger has a fresh problem: he can't find his glasses. He thinks they are back in the bar.

I bail into a parking lot and start to execute the U-turn, then steal a glance at drunk guy... and he's wearing his glasses. 

Not even on his forehead. He's looking through them.

I ask him if his missing glasses are, well, the ones on his face.

Sheepishly, he realizes that this is, indeed, the case.

20K+ rides at this point in my rideshare career, folks.

And yet, you can still have experiences you've never had before...

Why Cancellations Happen

The other night, I'm working in Lyft on a 3-ride streak that will provide a $12 bonus. My Lyft acceptance numbers aren't over 90% at the moment, so I don't know where I will be going before I accept the ride. Even if they were, Lyft doesn't tell you anything about passengers in queue, and if you are working on a streak, you have to take anything and everything anyway. It's less than charming, and dramatically worse than Uber, which is why Lyft generally needs to up the ante for me to work for them now, and I really dislike streak work. But I digress.  

In the shift, I've also seen occasional moments of white-hot surge pricing on Uber rides in my area, some of the highest of the year. I also haven't hit on any of them, and no one's tipped, so I'm running late in the shift and short on the money target.

I arrive at the pick up point for my final ride of the Lyft streak. Now that I'm here, Lyft lets me know where I'm going, and it's to a remote location in a neighboring state. I won't be getting any rides once I am there. Making matters worse is that the passenger's rating from previous drivers is suspiciously low, the pick up is in a dicey area to wait around in, and they aren't at the pick up location when I get there. Lyft will now start a 5-minute clock that compensates the driver at a rate of less than $8 an hour. Meanwhile, Uber is offering me a monster surge price at my present location, with rider destination information at the ready, provided I'm able to start taking rides on the other platform.

So the nature of rideshare is this:

> I'm not an employee of any platform. I'm a third-party contractor. So long as my numbers are good enough (and they are), canceling a passenger's ride does not harm me in the slightest.

> Taking this ride will cost me money, as well as time and opportunity in a surge zone, since you often can do more than one before the surge fades. By the time that I get back from dropping this passenger off, it will be too late in the evening for a likely surge price to still be in effect.

> The surge price in question will be over an hour of my likely wages, and my income is entirely fluid. It's also necessary for me at this time to stay ahead of my bills.

> Passengers can and do cancel on drivers all the time. It's also not as if the app gives the passenger the ability to go back and review which drivers have canceled on them.

> This isn't a long-term business for anyone, really. Eventually, the cars will drive themselves and drivers will not have this opportunity. Platforms routinely grind drivers over nickels and dimes, and the vast majority of passengers do not tip.

There is no benefit to the driver in this scenario to stay and wait. There is every benefit to the driver to cancel on the passenger.

So, did I cancel my passenger, log out of Lyft and save my shift, or did I wait it out and take the lesser fare?

I'll leave that to the reader to decide.

But if your driver cancels on you?

It's a lot more understandable now, yes?

The Nose Have It

Once upon a time, folks, I would give three stars to passengers who presented, shall we say, challenges with their body odor. (Side note: three stars or less makes the app take you out of the pool of possible passengers for future rides for the driver that gives the low rating.)

In general, drivers do not want to give passengers three stars. Poorly rated passengers often give tit for tat in driver ratings, and the margin for error on ratings is not extensive. Especially in the current age of Mask Police, fewer drivers and greater variance in surge pricing, doing things that cut your rating are not high on your list of priorities. 

Also, if the pick up opportunity is local, that's future business that could be off your plate. As a general rule of thumb, you don't do this gig if you don't like to be busy. Fewer possible passengers makes being idle more likely. 

So giving a failing grade is not a lightly considered act. The thought was that my own working morale was an issue, not to mention any residual funk left behind for the next passenger that, again, puts your rating in the cross hairs. 

However, I'm really starting to think that more passengers are pushing the olfactory bounds. Here's why I think it's happening.

> More people are working from home and failing to keep up their appearance (or, worse yet, overdosing on some competing odor to cover -- Axe Body Spray users for the loss)

> Cannabis use is up, and weed stank is, um, hard to ignore

> Vape use is up, and vape stank is even harder to ignore then weed stank

> Winter weather creates more heat in the car and less ventilation, so more stank

> Pre holiday drinking spikes create more drunk stank

Small sample sizes, I suppose, could also be in play. But I have to think the trends are going in the, well, wrong direction...

The Questions That I Think, But Do Not Ask

 > To riders who ask me about the driver shortage

Do you tip? Every single time you get good service from a driver?

Because my records show that over 90% of you do not.

So, follow up... What are you, personally, doing to ensure this service exists?

> To riders who enter my car without a coat and comment on the coldness of the weather (in December, no less)

Are you aware of Coat Technology? Could be a big thing, coats. If I were you, I'd invest.

> To riders who ask to charge their phone

Why is your failure to plan my problem?

And a follow up -- if you take a bus, train or plane, do you also expect those forms of transportation to cover for your failure?

> To riders who make the driver wait before getting in the car

Are you aware that you've hired transportation, and not an audience?

> To riders who can not use head phones while playing content on their phone

Why do you think I want to hear your content? (or) Why should I be subjected to your content, given that I can not drive a car safely while wearing head phones, while you can more than safely be a passenger while wearing them?

And a follow up -- who raised you, and can you please let them know they did a bad job?

All It Takes

The start of my shift is a guy who talks, then asks me to stop at a liquor store without changing the ride. That's kind of a drag, as it can make the app start chirping at me, but so be it. He promises to give me the change from a $20 from his purchase and actually does it, so it's a decent first hour. 

That's the thing about this hustle. All it takes is one ride to make the shift good.

The end of my shift is a guy out in the cold outside of a bar, screaming at his companion profanely, tearing off her coat while ordering her around. He's under-dressed and exuding enough bad energy to honestly scare the crap out of me, and he leaves the door open under the theory that I won't drive the hell away while he moves away to berate his companion some more.

Wrong theory. I drive off and the wind acceleration closes the door. I zip off about a half mile away and cancel the ride, file a report with Uber, and more or less end the shift early from the bad vibes and adrenalin. 

That's the thing about this hustle. All it takes is one ride to make the shift bad.