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...

Random and Recent

All of these happened, I swear, in the last week.

> Drunken passenger asks me if I smoke meth as part of an overall drunk belligerent strategy to get a rise out of the driver. Sure, because people who drive immaculate hybrid hatchbacks at the speed limit when bars close are just racing on the crystal. 

Note: I also have all of my teeth, unlike my passenger, and the fact that I know this about them also tells you that he wasn't wearing a mask when he asked. During a raging pandemic. Windows down, double mask on, triple vaccinated and three stars for you, some Future Rideshare Driver's problem...

> Drunken passenger asks me to drop them off near but not at their mother's home, because he's (a) got a blunt to finish and (b) she's all mad at him for crashing her car repeatedly, which is (c) why he's using rideshare. Well, points for honesty, and I guess you needed something to think the edge off her anger.

> Angry future passenger calls while I'm driving current happy passenger to say "You Are So Late" twice. I think he believes that Uber is my name, or that I had a massive plan for not being very close to him when he requested the ride. Heartbreakingly, he then canceled, which really showed me. While also putting a cancel fee in my pocket, and freeing me up for closer rides from presumably less crazy people.

> Passenger with an 18-minute ride changes it to a 51-minute ride, because they've missed their train. I'm able to take them to a different station instead, which will save them $40 over the full rideshare ride while keeping me close to him. They are thrilled with this idea and service... and did not tip. (Yes, I checked the log.)

> Pre-Xmas, a small boy wished me the most sincere happy holiday possible. I think he was 3 or 4 years old, and I'm also completely convinced that he was performing for his grandmother to make sure she knew he should be on the Nice List (we exchanged knowing looks). Just because it's a sales pitch doesn't mean it wasn't a good one.

> A passenger discloses he teaches chess. We have a great conversation about it, one that he says he's sorry to have to end, as the ride is coming to a close. I offer to give him my email address, as he also mentions he plays poker and lives in my area (I host a game). He declines, because, well, chess teacher and knows how to act in social circumstances are not exactly matching circles on a Venn diagram...

Six Tips On How To Save Money As A Rideshare Passenger

 

AKA, the thing that most passengers seem to want to know about.

6) Check both platforms.

Most folks seems to know to do this, but the reality is that the platforms offer incentives to drivers that are invisible to passengers. You may be able to take advantage. (Side note; 7 in 10 rideshare drivers are on both platforms, and both platforms do background checks now, so you are pretty much getting the same driver.)

5) Monitor your costs.

Especially if you have a consistent commute. If you know your floor, you will know when you are paying for a higher ceiling, and can maybe feel more confident about rejecting that rate and trying again.

4) Have patience with surge pricing -- but this is risky.

Eventually, all surge pricing fades -- but some drivers do not work unless it is in surge pricing, especially if the time of the request is late in the evening, or near closing times at bars. 

3) Maybe walk a little.

If you are in a peak zone and pick up location (game, concert, event, etc.), getting away from that place could cut your surge price. It's also possible that your driver will spend less time in traffic and get you moving faster. 

2) Be ready when the driver gets there.

You'll save the wait time cost. You'll also likely get a better rating from the driver.

1) Add stops rather than request multiple rides.

Just be sure that your time spent during the stops is minimized. (Especially if you want to keep your rating high.)

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...