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| 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?
