I'm a rideshare driver for a company like Lyft or Uber. These are the stories of my adventure. I'm a chick which, turns out, surprises people. Lots of interesting things happen in my vehicle and I'd like to share them with you :-)
Picked up two couples Memorial Day Weekend from a casual bar/restaurant. The requester had been drunk so of course sent me off course to pick him up. When we finally connected & figured out his location, I was feeling shitty about another wild goose chase so I told him I could come, but only if I could start the trip already.
On the way over, I had a slight pang of guilt about that. I mean, I've fucked up a pick up point when I requested as a not quite sober rider. So I decided to make sure the car ride was top notch service and fun and it was GREAT. After the initial dang why were you over there whine whine whine exchange of course.
They wanted to keep the party going so on the way to the house, we stopped at a quickie mart so they could pick up assorted adult beverages.
We had some more laughs & they really enjoyed the ride. So much so that one offered me a tip which per guidelines I tried to refuse at first. He insisted and then said, yeah but for later OK? I laughed and said it was fine since I was done for the night and meeting my boyfriend. He then offered another one. How sweet!! But I waved him off saying no no he'd already been kind enough. :-) What was it? A tasty bottle of one of these bad boys below.
The other night I got a hit in one of the cities I normally work & it was a house I'd been to just a night or two before. Perfect. They were rad.
I roll up and get a call from the rider "Sorry, but would you be OK with taking some shoes to my friend?" LOL sure, why not? After an exchange of some info & instructions I head off down the road with some serious fuck me pumps riding shotgun.
You know what shoes can't be? Drunk. Or A-holes. Or eat up all my snacks and drink all my waters. And they're fine getting snapchat'd without their consent.
Most of the time riders are where the app says they are. Sometimes though, there's a hot mess on the other side of the app and ain't nobody got time for that. I got a request from a specific address, which is SUPER. Love that. Sometimes I get an address range like 1501-1599 Main St. which makes me cruise til I hit their avatar. But I roll up on the joint, a closed museum, and figure I'm taking someone home from work. The place is a ghost town so as I normally do when there's not a human in sight, I send a text telling them I've arrived and ask where would be most convenient to meet them. A minute later I get a response saying they're out facing the street. It then dawns on me that this dude had a 4.2 rating and is now telling me he's out facing a street covered in No Stopping signs because the traffic lanes go all the way to the curb. I sigh and decide to do a quick run up and down the street to see if I can flush him out. I mean, I'd already told him I'm in the damn parking lot. I cruise up and down but nothing. I pull over again to send him another text. He tells me he's at the corner of X and Y which is blocks away. No, no, and no. I'm starting to understand the rating. I'm PMSing and don't want to risk my perfect rating so I send him a text telling him sorry, but what you requested is a lot different than that ... And then cancel on him. I get a WHAT?!? But that's what I requested!! Wah. Sober up. My app then dings another request for him and I'm like nooooooope. See ya. Later that night I'm cruising to the airport & just as I get to the freeway off ramp split where one lane heads into the airport and the other to my usual camp out spot across the street I get a request from within the airport. I accept & as soon as I'm in arrivals (no parking, no waiting) I stop to text a confirmation of what terminal he appears to be in. As I'm waiting for a reply a Sherriff swaggers up to tell me that I could get a ticket for stopping and a ticket for texting while driving. I tell him either I'm stopped or I'm driving, both things can't be true. I leave SchrĂśdinger's cat out of the conversation for now. I tell him I'm leaving and I get a text from my rider saying HE IS STILL ON THE PLANE. On. The. Plane. Everybody knows that when you go to hell you're flown there on some shitty airline (like Southwest) because what other introduction to hell would be as perfect as the soul sucking experience of US air travel? But something tells me to check into it & maybe wait for him. Might have had something to do with his high rating. I ask if he has any bags to pick up so I know if I should circle or go park across the street. He tells me no bag & he's in the first row so as soon as the door opens he'll be right out. I wait for him & do a slow circle. In the meantime he's apologizing to me saying the app said a car was 13 minutes away and I got there A LOT sooner. I tell him it's all good and not to worry. When I finally make it to him he explains that he uses the service all the time and normally he waits at the curb for awhile so he thought he'd request it earlier but then the jetway was broken. He was awesome, sincere and I quite enjoyed having him as a rider. But I worry that he was the exception to the rule. I mean, my very first rider ever totally boned it on the location. Not just blocks, but the next city over. Or maybe it'll just be an excellent way for me to weed out the a-holes.
Picked up at the airport. Rider lives in Sacremento & works in Orange County. Next night another airport pickup. This one lives in Orange County & works in San Francisco. So strange to me.
I really don't care for getting dressed up & going out. Bars are OK sometimes, but you can forget about clubs. Probably because I'm about a minute away from being old enough to start yelling at the kids to get off my damn lawn. Galdarn whippersnappers.
But the idea of bars, clubs, and secret after hours always sounds amazing. So I live vicariously through my riders. They're fun, I get to drive through LA with its amazing Saturday night energy, but I don't have the hangover and I walk away with more money than I started with.
The other night I took a couple to the Magic Castle. It was going to be their first time and the excitement was completely contagious. If you're not familiar with it, here's a bit from Wikipedia:
The lobby of the Castle has no visible doors to the interior, and visitors must say a secret phrase to a sculpture of an owl to gain access, exposing the entrance to the club. Nightly, five different magic performances are showcased in three different theaters, with additional performances added in the Peller as well as Hat and Hare Pub and W.C. Fields Bar on weekends. Magicians perform in several different theaters, including the intimate Close-Up Gallery, a larger Parlour of Prestidigitation, and stage illusions in the Palace of Mystery. Informal performance areas near the five bars give magician members the space for impromptu magic for guests and other patrons. In the music room, a piano is played by invisible "Irma," the Castle's "resident ghost," who takes musical requests.
When we pulled up to the front, I squeed with delight for them and they squeed right along with me. I mean, how can you not?
Although I'd have loved to go right inside with them, I much preferred my jeans over fancy dress and seeing what else the night had to offer.
The Sharing Economy affords people the ability to participate in certain experiences or utilize certain products without ownership.
Also called Collaborative Consumption - the thought process behind it is that we can all share our resources rather than individually go out and purchase them. This...
What the Invisible Hand of free-market innovation giveth, the Dead Hand of politically motivated regulation desperately tries to taketh away.
Thatâs the only way to describe whatâs happening to three wildly innovative and popular products: the award-winning electric car Tesla, taxi-replacement service Uber, and hotel-alternative Airbnb. These companies are not only revolutionizing their industries via cutting-edge technology and customer-empowering distribution, theyâre running afoul of interest groups that are quick to use political muscle to maintain market share and the status quo.
The battle between what historian Burton W. Folsom calls âmarket entrepreneursâ and âpolitical entrepreneursâ is an old and ugly one, dating back to the earliest days of the American experiment. Market entrepreneurs make their money by offering customers a good or new service at a good or new price. Political entrepreneurs make their money the old-fashioned way: They use the government to rig markets and kneecap real and potential competitors. In his great 1987 book, The Myth of the Robber Barons, Folsom discusses how the 19th-century steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton quickly went from a market entrepreneur to a political one by securing a 30-year monopoly from the New York legislature for all steamboat traffic in the Empire State.
Especially in todayâs sluggish economy, itâs more important than ever that market innovators win out over crony capitalists. Letting markets work to find new ways of delivering goods and services isnât just better for customers in the short term, itâs the only way to unleash the innovation that ultimately propels long-term economic growth. After all, no country has ever regulated its way out of a recession.
Tesla has done the unthinkable not once but twice: First, it built an electric car that people actually want to buy despite a price tag north of $70,000 for its cheapest models. Second, it has the temerity to sell directly to its wealthy customers, rather than subjecting them to the ritualized hell that is known as auto dealerships. But because auto dealers account for as much as 20 percent of state sales taxes, their wishes often become legislatorsâ commands. At the top of their wish list? Donât let carmakers sell directly to customers. The most glaring example of protectionism just took place in New Jersey, whose legislature added even more burdens to rules already banning the direct sales of cars to customers. Now Teslas effectively canât be sold in New Jersey, reports The New York Times, all in the name of consumer safety and protecting competition. News flash: Anyone who can afford a $70,000 car doesnât need much protecting. And if youâre ready to believe car dealers when they argue that incredibly complicated rules that make it impossible for new companies to enter their market is about protecting competition, Iâve got an expensive undercoating package I want to sell you.
The app-driven car service Uber, which bills itself as âeveryoneâs car serviceâ and connects drivers and riders in minutes, presents a similar threat to traditional taxi and ride services in the 30-plus U.S. cities in which it operates. Rather than fight for customers by cutting fares, increasing the number of cabs, or improving services, taxi commissioners and city councils from San Francisco to New York are instead trying to regulate Uber out of business on the grounds that it provides unfair and unsafe competition.
Never mind that Uber riders get to instantly rate their experience in a way no cab passenger ever does (just as amazingly, drivers get to rate passengers!). At the state level, California has already instituted a bevy of regulations on Uber, Lyft, and other new ride-sharing services. These range from mandatory criminal background checks for drivers, licensing via public utilities commissions, and driver training programs. Last year, Washington, D.C. officials unsuccessfully tried to squeeze out Uber with regulations on the types of cars that could carry passengers, what sorts of credit-card processing machines could be used, and how the companyâs app operates.
Airbnb, a website that allows people to rent out everything from vacation homes to spare couches for short-term stays, works great for everyone but conventional hoteliers and cities trying to bilk travelers for tourist taxes. Operating in 192 countries and typically showing hundreds of thousands of offerings, Airbnb has faced stiff regulations in towns supposedly famous for their weirdness and openness to lifestyle experimentation, such as Austin, Texas (which charges hosts an annual licensing fee and limits the number of participants) and Portland, Oregon (which has banned the service in residential neighborhoods). In New York, rent-control advocates are teaming up with hospitality-industry heavyweights to try and shut down Airbnb and similar services.
If mobsters were pulling these sorts of stunts, weâd recognize the attacks on new ways of doing business for what they are: protection rackets, with state regulators rather than professional hitmen creating and enforcing rules to benefit well-connected businessmen. The real losers are not just the next generation of innovators but also customers who lose out on more ways of getting what they need or want.
Folsomâs study of political and market entrepreneurs also suggests that political entrepreneurs are ultimately unsuccessful. Indeed, in 1817, Fulton claimed that his monopoly meant that no one could ferry passengers to New York City from neighboring states. A young Corneilius Vanderbilt was hired by a Jersey businessman to challenge Fulton not in a court of law but on the Hudson River, ferrying passengers from Elizabeth, New Jersey and Gotham. Vanderbilt cheekily flew a flag from his ship that read, âNew Jersey must be free.â While evading capture, Vanderbilt lowered prices and changed the business climate.
It turns out that New Jersey must be free again â to sell Teslas. And New Yorkers should be free to rent out their rooms if they want to. And Uber to drive you where you want to go. The Invisible Hand of free markets shouldnât have to spend so much of its time slapping away the Dead Hand of political entrepreneurship
The numbers, as reported by JP Mangalindan for Fortune, are staggering:
The San Francisco Cab Drivers Association (SFCDA), an association for registered taxi drivers that promotes fair working conditions and business practice, reports that one-third of the 8,500 or so taxi drivers in San Francisco â over 2,800 â have ditched driving a registered cab in the last 12 months to drive for a private transportation startup like Uber, Lyft or Sidecar instead.
Read that again. One-third. Twelve months. We tend to throw around the term âdisruptionâ way too often these days, basically stripping it of all meaning. But this is actual disruption. And itâs disruption in such a short amount of time that it can truly be felt by all.
Fairly early for a Saturday night, I picked up two dudes in Hollywood. The first got in shaking and shivering. When the sun goes down, it can get surprisingly cold, but man it was only about 60.
"Are you sure you didnât do anything else?" His friend questioned him after telling me where we were headed.
A fairly sober sounding response âNo, man and I didnât even have that much to drink. Hey, can you turn the heat up?â
I kicked the temp up to 75 and eyed him warily in my rear view mirror. I hadnât yet gotten a puker and damn if this dude was gonna pop my cherry so early on the big money night. But he was shivering like it was the arctic and talking about how much heâd puked already. Itâs not even 10pm yet, but hereâs this kid with possible alcohol poisoning on the verge of royally fucking up my car. Or worse still, just croaking on me if it turned out he had done something.
His friend questioned his intake again & after a little back and forth I got another request to turn the heat up. I put it up to 80 and hoped weâd get there before I broke out into a disgusting sweat. He murmured something about wanting nothing more than his bed and laid back into the seat. He soon quieted, stopped shaking and the three of us spent the ride in silence until we finally reached downtown LA.
He assured his friend he could make it up on his own so his wonderful pal decided to go back to the club. On our way back his friend got super chatty about how he hadnât gone to bed the night before. He was up too late and had to see his parents in OC, so he just did more coke to make it through. Gosh, and I just thought you had allergies ;-)
Which then led to him telling me about how he had partied at with Quentin Tarantino and how much coke Tarantino had done. Like apparently just a mind boggling amount of coke.
Before he could say coke for the 80th time, we were back at the club and I was on my way to chauffeur around other trashed riders. Thankfully it was a no puke night.
In the only country in the world where women canât drive, the launch of an app that allows users to book cars online might just offer women some relief from the stifling rules that forbid them to operate a vehicle.
Uber, a San Francisco-based technology company that developed the software, used in more than 29 countries, entered the Saudi Arabian market this week and is running a test program in the capital of Riyadh. By initially offering rides at promotional rates, the company hopes to tap into a rich vein of customers looking for a ride in one of the most congested cities of the Middle East.
While Uber stands to profit off a culture in which half of the population is forced to rely on a driver, the company told Al Jazeera its app could empower women. âChoice is a beautiful thing, and that is especially true for those women who currently have limited access to reliable transportation options,â Uber said. Riyadh does not have a public transportation system.
Thatâs always how I am at the end of my day. I canât help it. Just oooonnnneee more fare.
The other night it was pretty slow in Orange but I held out. But I got a ding from right across the street, so I was like SCORE!
Shortly after pulling up I got a call from the rider. "Sorry, we're over at Chapman University actually. I'm not sure what I did with the app." After verifying where she was she added "Sorry, we've got furniture a bunch of people, two dogs... I'll explain when you get here."
I am NOT taking dogs in my car.
Turns out a buying excursion to an estate sale left these folks without enough room for everyone and everything. I arrived into a chaos of barking dogs and a frazzled married couple fighting over how to pack two cars. I watched their passive aggressive chacha with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion. I gave them a warning on the free wait time & when it expired I started the fare.
When they finally coordinated everything my car had a mom, her 10 year old son, a big ol table, seat cushions and two bags of books.
"We're going to Malibu."
Suddenly, all was GOOD.
After stopping for a wee break, our caravan was ready for the drive.
We then spent the drive working on the kidâs vocabulary. He wasnât having it. And his mom wasnât having him not having it. I was pretty much over it as well. At one point I sided with the kid "Moooom, it's 10:15pm. I'm tiiiired." But with the kid's crap answers and sometimes bratty attitude I mostly sided with Mom. I kept trying to figure out why the kid always wanted to put extra vowels in his words, especially in place of consonants. On the bright side, I brushed up on root word meanings, got a fat fare and a fat tip.
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