How Much Should This Cost

Note The Variance

Because news feeds are like this, I get stuff in my daily diet of headlines about rideshare all the time. Recently, this included a story from Perth, Australia where the writer shared the dastardly knowledge that drivers were intentionally logging out of the system in between fares to goose up the scarcity and create costlier rides.

I have thoughts.

1)     Your driver does not really work for Uber or Lyft or DoorDash or any other system you can name. They work for themselves, and briefly and intermittently, their passenger. There is no incentive for the driver to behave “better” for the passenger by doing things that make rides cheaper for those folks. There is, in fact, a disincentive for doing this. Hence, um, why drivers are doing this. (Also, fun fact? People who are not paying surge price do not tip any more or often than people who are. At least, that’s what monitoring of my income proves.)

2)     The idea that there is an amount that a ride “should” cost has a lovely implied bias that (a) the base rate is fair (it’s not), (b) the writer or algorithm knows how much a driver should make (they don’t; this is all real-time guesswork from machines), and (c) the passenger well and truly deserves to keep every last penny they can from the platform and driver (um, not how capitalism works).

Defend these answers? Sure. The price of gas is up about 30% in the last few months locally from global forces (thanks, Putin!), but the price per mile for rideshare has not changed. Rideshare platforms charge more or less based on the starting point for the ride, as if miles in some areas did not cost as much to drive as miles in others.

On the last part, the lifetime percentage of my income that comes from tips as I type this, is 5.78%. (6.99% in 2022. Better!) Compare that to the 15 to 20% that is the historic norm in major cities for cab drivers, then come on back and tell me how nefarious rideshare drivers are.

 Some of this is just tipping being easier to avoid in a cashless society, but still. A social contract was broken when we moved from cabs to rideshare, and it was not broken on the behalf of drivers.

And yes, I always tip my rideshare driver, as I do any waitstaff, and as any decent human being in America should do. I also try really hard to not tell myself the story that the vast majority of my passengers are indecent human beings.

3)     Passengers have, and take, other options. They walk, ride bicycles, take buses and trains, call a cab, call a friend or relative they did not otherwise want to inconvenience, and maybe figure out some other plan for the next time that this kind of situation arises. The idea that a rideshare driver is their only possible option, and that the driver should feel guilt for wanting to make more and/or not doing the job whenever they want to stop doing it… um, F*** and No.

Do I engage in tactics to increase my pay? Of course. You would if you were driving as well. This isn’t a charity service, and the rapid rise in gasoline costs in the past three months has entirely come out of the driver’s pocket. If you are wondering why it’s so hard to find a driver, um, that. Drivers can do math. We can also find other things to do with our time when the math is not good. If you want us to work when it’s not very good economically, well… some of us will, especially if we don’t have other options. But we are going to find other options. With a quickness. And hey, presto, surge pricing. Go yell at the people who sell gasoline if you want to talk about how much things “should” cost.

I don’t want to come off as hostile or unfriendly about this. I do a lot of extra stuff for passengers all the time, and the data proves it – never in jeopardy of delisting, very few complaints over five years and 21K+ rides given, lots of deep compliments and the occasional Best Driver Ever remark – but at the end of the day, um, 5.78%.

If a journalist wants to start their piece from the point of view of how the customer is always right and the customer should never pay more…

Well, quick question for them.

How much were they paid for the article, and how much *should* it have cost?

Petty But Awful

That's Not A Good Sign

 If you are a rideshare driver, you go through a lot of toll booths. It's a mild bummer to the job, as the reimbursement doesn't quite match the hassle of capital flight through your account, but so be it. Sometimes you can avoid them by knowing about other routes (the Trenton area, where I work most often, has several bridges to Pennsylvania that are small and free), but other times, it is what it is.

The New Jersey Turnpike, on the other hand, is way more expensive, and usually more avoidable. Until it really isn't -- most often when you have to take it to get to the fare in the first place.

Passengers do not pay, or at the very least, do not pay the full amount, until they are in the car. If you cancel in the first few minutes, I get nothing. 

That's annoying but part of the gig on regular streets. 

But if I'm halfway over the toll road?

Does not make for a very happy ride share driver. 

Or one that feels very good at staying in the app...

It's A Competition

 Here's something that people may know, but do not really understand about rideshare... drivers do not work for the platforms. They work for the passenger. Who they are likely never going to see again. So in my case, I am mostly working for myself, and that guy... is not easy to work for.

Drivers perform to the expectations directed to remain in the platform, but assuming that you don't get too far out of bounds... that's about it. If you, as the passenger, have an experience that makes you not use the platform again, it doesn't really matter to the driver, unless you raise real beef about it, and maybe not even then, without proof. It's also invisible to them. I'm not saying the gig is Karen-proof, but personally, I do not run into too many Karens.

So if your driver cancels on you, you don't really have a recourse. The same goes for when a passenger cancels on a driver, and by the way, that happens a lot more to drivers then it does to passengers. From a platform standpoint, so long as my metrics are above a certain level, it really... does not matter if I'm better at the job, or worse. (Well, better does seem to inspire more tipping and makes me happier, so that's what you get from me. Maybe not others.)

We don't really work for the platform. We work to be good enough to keep making money, and to work efficiently. You aren't taking a ride from the platform; you are taking a ride from a driver the platform found for you. 

It's competition.

And it goes both ways.

If you make a driver wait, you are costing them money, because that's time they are spending without efficiency. Waiting is about 1/4th of the revenue of driving. Passengers that are more conscientious get us to our goals faster. If you are using the driver as an audience for your conversation or personal drama or complicated errands, you aren't a competitive passenger. And should tip to cover the shortfall, but in general... you won't.

For the short tem, this does not really matter. If either the driver or the passenger gives three stars or less, they are not paired again -- but there probably are not more than a handful of drivers or passengers who have ever turned down a ride due to a rating. I turn down rides because they are too far away, are going to a place I have reasons to avoid (if I take you to Pennsylvania on Uber, I'm just driving back empty due to laws that only seem to matter to Uber), or involve a ton of tolls, traffic and distance. I'm double masked and don't enjoy overly long rides. I also do not want to work very far away from my home, for a bunch of reasons. That's why my acceptance rate will sometimes approach the low threshold.

But if you treat drivers inefficiently long enough? It will keep you from getting me again, because I'll 3-star you in an effort to save my own sanity, and maybe give you a reason to treat the next driver better.  And in a time when I consistently hear about how they are not enough drivers and you had to wait a long time...

Well, are you being as competitive as your driver?

What Rideshare Is Like Now (Again)

In case you were wondering how Omicron has impacted the rideshare economy...

Yeah, um, The Trends Are Not Good.

What's different now from earlier waves of the epidemic is the nature of pickups. I'm still getting a reasonable number of passengers, which has allowed me to qualify for bonuses -- critical for getting this out of minimum wage range -- but it's commuters now. Warehouse work off hours, restaurant workers dealing with take out orders, grocery shoppers, and the occasional train traveler. We're working. For now.

What's missing? College students. Drinkers. Travelers. Mall shoppers. People out for a good time, and doing the responsible thing by letting a professional drive, so they can imbibe without worry. And without those folks (and, well, their greater propensity to tip, and their numbers to create surge price), the potential for lucrative hours evaporates, and you just have to work longer, for less per hour, to make what you need to make.

Anything else missing? Sure. Conversations. Tips. Surge zones. Efficiency. 

But also? My ratings are going back up. People are wearing masks again. They also seem more appreciative of the cleanliness standards and the complementary sanitizer.

And also... no one knows how much longer the pandemic is going to last, or if there's going to be a flurona or deltacron swerve. But the people in my car?

They are going to work. Because they have to. Same as me. Until this thing gets a lot deadlier, now that we know more and have vaccines and masks and an understanding of how it travels.

And also, no one's thinking about stimulus checks and unemployment compensation or anything else coming to save us. 

Finally, every cough, every sniffle? Met with suspicion. And whenever it's not too bitterly cold, a little bit wider opening of my window.

You Didn't Give Me Much To Go On

It's late in a very long shift. I'm working in Lyft and not knowing where I'm going on pick up, which is stressful but required at this time. I'm running out of hours in the shift to get the number of rides I need. After an intermittent amount of surge, I'm getting long rides to pick up at the lowest possible rate. If the job is fishing, and it is, you have to accept bad hours of it. This will be one of them.

This is also when your outlier rides happen. Especially in Lyft on the East Coast. Sometimes you get great people, and sometimes you get people that Uber booted. So it goes.

I drive 15 minutes to get to a passenger who doesn't use their real name on their account, so we're deep in the red flag territory already. My passenger comes from a building that isn't their address, and we're off for a 2-stop drive (another red flag) to the nearest 7-11. Which is 15 minutes away, at this hour, in this area. 

My passenger enters talking (blood red flag) and pretty much won't stop for the rest of my time (we way way past flags now). She presents as a white woman in her mid-30s, and she's lost her Vape in a laundry accident, so this is an agitated person with an unplanned expense and likely having withdrawal issues. It's clear she's under some pain, and it's also clear that I'm going to get some of it. It's also clear that she is not, well, entirely in her right mind. 

Or possessing of any kind of filter.

About halfway to our stop, she starts to question the GPS and by quick extension, me. "Do you get paid more to make this longer?" and "You think I want to be in this car with you?" and "It's like being in a cop car!" and "I think I'd rather be in the cop car again!"

There's nothing performative or intoxicated about any of this. She is, frankly, in the top 1% of intimidating passengers because there's honestly no way to gauge how this is going to go, or if she's just going to take a swing at the back of my head while I'm driving. (See also: past stories about the scorpion and the frog).

We get to the 7-11, and I'm able to park directly in front of the door. After a half dozen "You want anything?" with me saying no thanks, she's off to the store. But not before telling me how weird I am, and why can't she ever get drivers who aren't weird. Because of course. (I'm weird, by the way, because I'm not saying much. Oxygen to fire, that is.)

Over the next ten minutes as I get to watch and silently chastise myself for not ending the ride and making her some other rideshare driver's problem, I watch her move back and forth across the store. Taking her mask off and on, piling an absurd amount of random crap on the counter, letting other simpler transactions complete before hers, because hey, the driver I just berated for 10 minutes has nothing better to do than attend my performance art piece.

Finally, she gets back in and is in better spirits because drugs (I'm guessing). I try to talk calmly to her a bit to ensure that the low star rating is only going to come from me, and after five minutes of making sure she has everything, she finally exits the car and my life, forever, because of the joy of giving a passenger three stars or less.

But not before she asks me about my vaccination status (triple, as soon as they let me on all jabs), and how she's not (of course!)... and that she works in a pharmacy.

Also, that she got me some things, because the five times I said no must not have registered.

Oh, and the piece de resistance?

She left the receipt in the bag. All of these essentials were bought with a SNAP card (the new food stamps).

So you are using our safety net to tip in candy and sugar water to rideshare drivers (who didn't want it, and said so, a lot).

Final take for me with ride... 51 minutes, 20 miles, $25. Plus plunder and story, of course...