The illusion of job security

One of the things that can seem attractive about the gig economy is that you are your own boss. Set your own hours, stop or start whenever you want, no manager. 

Freedom. 

This is, of course, utter and complete horseflop. 

In every way, if only because setting your own hours means you will set many more of them to make the same money, and stopping and starting whenever you want implies that you are only doing this for Bonus Money. (Have you ever had Bonus Money, Dear Reader? Did it spend differently, or was it almost immediately turned into the same critical resource as Non Bonus Money? I'm betting the latter.)

Every passenger holds the destruction of the driver's professional livelihood in their hands, and that's why you are (a) seeing fewer and fewer drivers in many major markets, and (b) finding more and more drivers submitting everyone involved to constant video survalliance. And if you are a driver that thinks you might get different treatment from a platform due to your ratings, or your years of service, well... nope. I learned that first hand tonight.

As I'm backing out my driveway to start my first shift in a week (personal stuff and the day job has been intensive), I start to set up both platforms on my phone... only to get a message from Uber that says my account has been suspended. Why? Well, it seems that a passenger has reported that I was driving while inebriated, and that they need to investigate.

Now, a few points about this.

Dear Reader, I'm in my '50s. I've driven for rideshare platforms since 2017. I have arond 28K rides completed at this point, between Lyft and Uber. I have 5.0 ratings in both. I have never driven while inebriated. I have never been cited for driving while inebriated. I drink, on average, once or twice a month, usually while playing poker with my friends. On those days, I don't drive. I also haven't done a ride for Uber for six days, which means that any complaint would have been in the pipe for a very long and not terribly effective time.

But even if you don't know me, don't believe me and want to give passengers all of the power... honestly, how likely is it that a driver with those numbers just goes rogue? Wouldn't you be more wary of not losing that guy as a driver?

So what's really the most likely situation here? Well, folks, drivers rate passengers, and truth be told, I rate folks a lot. If the passenger smells bad, makes me wait, is loud and proud with the volume on their phone or conversation... I'm not giving five stars. If you take a shared ride and fill my car with unpaid passengers, I will still take you where you want to go, because you outnumber me and the first rule of rideshare is don't get you or your car hurt. But I will three star or lower to make sure you can't do it to me twice, and I suspect one of these fine upstanding passengers decided to meet my true assessment with spite.

Either that, or they are actively trying to cull drivers because maybe they just don't want to bother with secondary markets, like where I live.

What *should* a platform do in this situation? Well, if I was running the business, I'd... check the goddamned numbers. I'd investigate first, suspend later -- if at all. I would error on the side of the asset that's going to drive hundreds of dollars of revenue per shift into the company, rather than some individual, likely low value, passenger. In short, I'd run the business with nuance and discretion, rather than a blanket policy that tells the essential (for now, robots are coming) part of the business that they do not matter. 

Uber didn't do any of that for me tonight. What they did do, instead, was send me a great deal of cut and paste boilerplate that puts in no uncertain terms the idea that they will brook no dissent, pay no attention to math, or give a damn about loyalty.

So Lyft got a full shift from me tonight instead. And another tomorrow, even if Uber reinstates and apologizes, and possibly even if they are showing higher surge pricing and some other promotion to try and win me back.

Because the *only* good part about this dystopian nightmare of work is that you get to treat the platform the same way they treat you.

But only so long as there are two of them...

(Update: Account reinstated without explanation or reimbursement, but with the same self serving cut and paste policy bullspit. Asshats.)

What's going through the head of your ride share driver when you make them wait

At pick up: Is the map right? Godamn these maps. Or maybe it's the GPS. Or my phone. What if they have mobility issues. Well, I'm here now. Hazards lights on. Hope a cop isn't going to ruin my day for the illegal stop. Hope the passenger shows up. Well, patience. Just because they have an app that shows them the driver every block of the way, that doesn't mean they are going to be waiting on the street for you. Despite you doing that for every driver you've ever taken, and plenty of passengers, especially in good neighborhoods, doing just that. Goddamn, is that so hard?

1 minute in: Let's just check their rating here. Be a real shame if something were to happen to it. Oh, here's the app telling me that I'm being paid to wait, which is the biggest crock of crap yet, and rideshare platforms pay their drivers in crocks of crap. Four minutes left until I cancel this schmuck. Should I move to where the app thinks their phone is? That never works until it does.

2 minutes in: I wonder if a rideshare driver ever just pulled out a weapon and iced a passenger for making them wait. That would be a cool scene in a movie. Why hasn't anyone ever made a decent movie where a rideshare driver is the protagonist? I should totally write that. Or at the very least consult for realism. It has to be more lucrative than waiting for some asshat to finally get in my car.

3 minutes in: I don't even want them to get in the car now. People like you are the reason I'm totally going to quit this job, just like I've been saying to myself for nearly everyone of the last seven years. In two minutes, I am totally locking the doors and driving away, probably while flipping the passenger the bird. I'm so doing that. I don't even care that I'll make a lot less that way, that I won't get closer to the quota goal, and so on. Principles! I'll feed principles to my family.

4 minutes in: I'm imagining you, dear passenger, in a pot. I guess maybe a pressure cooker? A pot, you'd just leap out of. You'll be in the pot for as long as you made me wait here, flashers on, committing the garden variety traffic violation that always make me twinge a bit, since it's making the world worse. Either that, or I'll just sit in the car in park after you get in, making you very aware of what I'm doing, then cancel the ride without ever going anywhere. Sure, you'll be angry and confrontational, and if I do this kind of thing often enough, I'll be out of a side hustle where I routinely get to wait for inconsiderate people, but maybe -- just maybe -- you won't do this to your next driver. I'll pay it forward, be the better person, help my fellow drivers achieve a world in which everyone is considerate enough to be ready and waiting for us on pick up. Can't make a better world without cracking a few omelettes.

5 minutes in: Oh, you're here, and apologetic, and I have the memory of a puppy, as for as you know. Let's get you to where you are going, with as much insincere enthusiasm as my tip-grifting ass can muster. There's hand sanitizer in the door handles, water bottles behind my head...

Bring on the robots

Yes, This Is Better

So I've been hearing about robot cars for nearly my entire career as a rideshare driver. Seven years of it's happening, your hustle is going away, what do you think about it, etc. And I've covered this before and at length (shorter: tragedy of the commons, filthy cars without human drivers exerting social pressure, generational unease)... but tonight, dear reader? I'm ready to be replaced.

Here's why.

1) The social skills of passengers are in free fall. When I started doing this, very few passengers would play audio on their phone without headphones; now, it's the majority. If they took a phone call, they'd apologize and try to cut it short. Now, they are on the phone for the entire trip... and I think I know why.

The reason, of course, is that they've had some past bad interaction with a driver, or think the driver is going to scam them in some way, either by taking the wrong route, canceling the ride on a multi-stop drive, or give them a bad rating. Maybe they had a driver hit on them. In any event, the safer play is to let the driver know that conversation isn't just unlikely, but actively discouraged. As if I couldn't get the hint, honestly.

2) An ever-dwindling percentage of passengers want the driver to speak, or to speak to the driver. I'm an outlier; I confirm the address, tell the passenger about water and hand sanitizer, and I'm generally done in five to ten seconds... and that's five to seconds too many for a growing percentage of passengers. Yes, seriously.

3) The overall deterioration of discourse in the country. I'm a small white guy with a clean hybrid, and any number of people seem to think they know my politics -- left or right or otherwise -- on sight. It gets tiresome to fight Culture War for low wages. Once the cars are driven by robots, we'll all get to talk to each other less, and that's what we really want, right?

Well, no. 

But I can't push the ocean back with a broom, no matter how many good talks I sometimes pull out of people.

Just say no to shared rides

And clown payment

Now that the pandemic is fading, Lyft and Uber are going back to offering shared rides. These date back to the start of the rideshare industry, and create the situation where strangers ride with other strangers.

Here's why this is bad now, and has always been bad, for drivers.

1) If there are no other passengers on the route, it's just a cheap solo ride, which is to say, sub-survival money for drivers. Don't tell yourself any different. Your driver knows, on some level, that you are paying as little as humanly possible for the ride. It's not as if we're making a bigger percentage on this from any other ride.

2) While I'm sure it's happened at some point in the history of the industry, shared ride passengers don't tip. Not now, not ever. (Go ahead, prove me wrong. You won't.)

3) The vast majority of people who take shared rides are annoyed when... the ride is shared. Especially if they wind up with the short end of the algorithim's decision on who gets to where they are going first. Backseat driving is rampant among rideshare passengers. It's multiplied with shared rides.

4) Passengers are more likely, not less, to make additional demands on the driver (taking the water that's mostly there to inspire tips without tipping, yelling out the window, asking for access to the sound system or a phone charge, changing the temperature or music, changing directions, asking for stops, etc., etc.) on a shared drive.

5) Shared rides are also subject to surge pricing, so these pay as little as possible riders... may be really annoyed at the price.

6) Shared rides mean selling every seatbelt. I drive a small hybrid hatchback. It legally fits five adults. If five adults are in my car, no one will be happy about it.

7) As you might have guessed from the top 6 reasons, your driver isn't in a great head space when you enter the car. It's like you are starting the ride with two strikes on you, so if you aren't ready and waiting in a place where it's safe to stop from the start? We're furious with you. For reasons.

So, given all of that... why do drivers take these rides?

Simple, because we have to. We got unlucky while other drivers, all around us, didn't. Drivers have to take a certain percentage of rides that are offered to them to stay on the platform. We work to stay on the platform, not for the platforms.

If we're chasing a bonus on rides completed, shared rides can almost work out to a decent hour. But that's a pretty rare event and requires driving for one app only, which is also not usually the best way to make a buck.

So, if you're taking a shared ride? Be on time. Be good to the driver. Know that you're working on a 2-strike count. And know that we're looking for any excuse to 3-star you and not take your shared self ever again.

Were the savings worth it?

Princeton Hijinks

This place harbors weirdoes

When you drive rideshare in central New Jersey, most of your fares are going to be in Trenton or Princeton. These are very different worlds, separated by only about 15 minutes of highway driving. 

People worry about me when I drive in Trenton, due to the higher crime rates, bad roads and challenged people. But the reality is that Princeton also has whackadoodles, and while the roads are better, the rampant deer and greater chance of long rides to places I don't want to go to (cough, Newark Airport) don't make it a dramatically better choice of where to work.

Anyhoo. Two recent stories.

 Two teenaged white bros, going to a Princeton municipal golf course. I am invisible to these princes, and their phone conversation is loud... which is why I know their plan for the day. Stealing a golf cart, driving onto the course to meet up with their friends who are mid-round, and drink, I think. They don't have clubs to help them in this charade, or any past experience that this kind of thing will work. I 3-star them to make sure that I'm not a getaway driver later...

Pick up on the Princeton campus. Upper class student, talkative, engageed in high scholarship. We have a fantastic conversation for 20 minutes as I take her into downtown Trenton. It's a nice Sunday afternoon, and I'm dropping them off at City Hall... which is closed today. I ask them why, and after a sheepish few seconds, she admits that her destination is the weed shop across the street. I pivot to note that there is a closer weed shop to Princeton now, but that this seems to be a very good one as well, and it's good of her to patronize stores in neighborhoods that probably need the business more...