Ride sharing
Uber:
there are things to consider as we ride share…
There’s something about sitting in the back of a stranger’s car that women, all the women here can relate. Right?
All our lives we’re taught to be careful, don’t talk to strangers, watch your drinks.
And now suddenly it’s totally cool to swipe a guy, off the internet, get in the back of his car, and let him drive you around. I dunno.
Taxis had legitimacy around them. Right? They were yellow. And they had those little lights on top. There was the glass in between, so you couldn’t hurt the driver. They were protecting the driver from ME. I was the danger.
I might as well have been roofied for all the control I have over the situation.
My city welcomed Uber today. Literally today. 2019. We like to be cautious about stuff like ride sharing. Let’s see if it works. Then, if it works, we’ll invent our own version. Sometimes it’s a runaway hit and sometimes not so much. Well, no one got on it so finally, finally, we opened the door. I put together this Uber experience into a little piece. A walk down memory lane as I considered ride sharing and what I think about it.
“There’s an entire row of taxis right there,” I said, pointing at the curb ten feet away. “Why order an Uber?” We’d arrived in sunshine-filled Palm Springs for the weekend and I wanted to get to the hotel, throw on a swimsuit, and sit by the pool.
My husband travels frequently and was an early adopter of ride-sharing apps. He loves the simplicity of practical technology designed to appeal to the video-game generation. I had to admit that I also enjoyed tracking the progress of the little black cars on his screen. But I worry about the disruption to industry such progress represents. Once I worked in a travel agency and watched the woman who had built a profitable business panic as it buckled under the weight of the internet. I feel sad for people whose jobs are lost to change, including taxi drivers whose livelihoods have been dismantled by the steady chipping away of ride-share companies. I feel an obligation to the vestiges of earlier days, and pity those who built lives that are now crumbling as unstoppable change rushes toward them.
My husband also thinks taxis are dirty, if not filthy, and their drivers rude. He has a point. I’ve ridden in taxis in many cities and been repelled by the scent of unwashed clothing and body and the years of dirt and who knows what else ground into upholstery (It’s always upholstery, isn’t it?). And as much as I’ve had wonderful conversations with cab drivers about life and family and the city’s best restaurants, I’ve also climbed into cars whose drivers either ignore me, chatting away on their phones, or, worse, snub me with a steady, willful fury I try to decipher. Is it my hair? My clothing? My destination? How have I unwittingly enraged someone when all I did was open the door, say hello, and buckle my seat belt?
I have a wild imagination, so it could be I am misreading these situations, but it’s also possible I’m highly attuned to what people are thinking and am picking up subtle clues (I lean to this explanation). Ubers alleviated many of my concerns once I realized I didn’t want to be the woman clinging to the past in a romantic belief that because it was once, it was better. Also, the drivers appeared motivated. The price was settled in advance, and there was no physical exchange of money or card. Even better, vehicles were clean, smelling either benignly of air freshener or, better yet, nothing at all. On my virgin rides, I did what I’d always done with taxis and climbed in and said hello. I discovered drivers who not only said hello back, but often turned to face me as they did. Some smiled. We’d chat, or not, and this wasn’t stressful because we both appeared to be attempting to read the situation and act accordingly, communicating respectfully with each other. I loved it. I was committed. Taxi: no! Uber: yes!
Then I climbed into an Uber whose driver had reversed angrily down NYC’s Fifth Avenue and lurched to a stop to pick me up. “Sorry,” I said, feeling bad for upsetting him. “I didn’t realize you were up the block.” He ignored me and started driving, punching the gas and braking hard. I sat on high alert, studying him in the rearview. I’m not a car person but this was an old, boxy ’80s sedan. Four doors and all angles, bench seating in back. The driver’s seat was reclined, and his left hand rested nonchalantly on the steering wheel, his right on the shifter. I considered his face. Black sunglasses hid his eyes, but his square jawline was prominent. The bones of it were solid, sharp, defined. I pondered the article I’d read about DNA testing that assesses for Neanderthal variants. For no good reason, I’d been relieved when mine came back clear of them.
Not his, I decided, as I watched him from the backseat. He looked exactly as I imagined a Neanderthal would. Like those drawings illustrating the progression of primate to man. I figured this guy belonged halfway between final ape and first man. I wondered if he was prone to depression, as I’d read this crowd was. I was entertaining myself with this conjecture when an unwelcome idea developed. What if, I speculated, along with inheriting known traits like rosy cheeks and freckles (yes, freckles!), this obviously Neanderthal driver had the adaptive power to read minds? What if he was reading my mind right now?
I immediately put my copious yoga practice to work, attempting to clear my mind of anything but benign thoughts. It was useless, like you trying not to think of an elephant right now. See? Utterly hopeless. I panicked. I wondered if he was silently enjoying my frantic attempts to think of anything but my impending death. I’d quickly determined that, like every third episode of Law and Order, I would be murdered, and he would toss my corpse into the adjacent Hudson River.
With the car hurtling forward and the river sparkling in the sun, I made a determined effort to remain outwardly calm and not hyperventilate. My knees were weak, like in a novel but true. When we reached my destination and he screeched to a halt, I nearly fell in my haste to get away.
It wasn’t until we went to Palm Springs that I discovered that Uber ratings go both ways. I ordered the Uber for our group and was flummoxed as car after car rejected my request.
“What’s your rating?” my husband asked quietly; showing me how to read my profile when I looked at him blankly. “Four point five?”
He was incredulous and disappointed. I’m the social one who makes friends with waitresses and airplane seatmates. How could my rating be so bad? “What do you tip the drivers?”
Alan, travelling with us, said he gives nothing less than twenty percent.
I was embarrassed. “Um, nothing?”
Nothing? I, a child of the service industry whose entire college experience depended on gratuities, couldn’t believe my own words. Somehow, I’d decided the fares were so expensive and that, hey, hadn’t the whole Uber thing happened to remove that uncomfortable dependence on arbitrary monetary tokens? Hadn’t they loudly proclaimed tips unnecessary? When they walked it back I disagreed. And so I’d dismissed the pop-up after every ride asking Did I Want To Tip with a quick swipe of Nope, not at all.
My husband showed me his rating, which was five point oh, the best it could be. In determined response, I ordered and paid for every Uber our group needed that weekend, investing hundreds of dollars and lots of energy in courting favorable ratings from the drivers. At first, I simply hoped they would be so enthralled with my friendly conversation and excellent tip they’d give me copious stars. But after a couple rides and my rating still in the basement, I became strategic. “Would you like to talk, or do you prefer quiet?” I asked one driver I was having trouble reading. “Do you mind,” I’d toss off nonchalantly as we exited the vehicle (taking any garbage with us), “rating me nicely?”
My rating crept up and so did my confidence. I skipped the group San Andreas Fault tour (why would I want to visit the scene of so many world-ending movies?) and took an hour-long Uber to The Joshua Tree for a festival. The driver was chatty. He spent the hour pointing out where the UFOs had landed (There! Right there!) and explaining how his dearly departed husband had worked in a department of the government so mysterious he flew a plane—secretly, of course—to get to work each day. I was more relaxed on this ride, weaving through the desert and talking aliens in the baking sun, even though I was probably closer to death on it than on any of the others.
My next Uber was surreptitiously hailed by the valet in front of the Gucci store when another driver dropped me and my friend after cruising by. The valet was aghast, and ashamed by this behavior.
“I know someone,” he said. “Just pay her cash.”
We were hungry so we agreed, even though I get nervous whenever anyone wants cash, a vestige of threatening tax collector visits when I was a waitress. The woman, the only female driver I’d ever had, chatted and explained she knew the valet because they were neighbors and often shared a six-pack as she drove him home from work. Yes, beer. I asked. After we’d gotten out, she opened the window and called me back to the car.
“Joe wants me to give you his number,” she said. “Is that OK?” I was grateful the ride was off the books and she couldn’t mess with my hard-earned four point eight four.
“I’m married,” I said. “Tell him thanks, though.”
My confidence soaring, I ordered an Uber from lower Manhattan to the Upper West Side, even though the train would have been cheaper and faster. I stood at the designated meet-up point in freezing rain, a block from the warmth of the hotel foyer. The Uber was six minutes away. Now five. Now fifteen. What? I stared at the black car zig-zagging streets, stopping, turning, toward, away. When I climbed in half an hour later, soaked, the driver apologized for his lateness. “Next time you should give me a call,” he said, although he could have himself. No matter. I forgave him and settled in and we talked about all sorts of things. We’re all flawed, I reminded myself.
But when I looked out my window the scene was different from what I’d expected. I checked the Uber map on my phone. When I saw the map was off and the little black car was nowhere to be seen, my sense of security vanished. I asked the driver when we would get there.
“My appointment is in five minutes,” I explained.
His reply was alarming. “What’s the name of the little town in the Bronx, again?”
Town? Bronx? Neither. I texted my friend and told her I’d be twenty minutes late and then called up my destination on my phone and held it up to his ear so he could hear Siri’s commands. I no longer trusted this guy who couldn’t follow a map—one of just two things he needed to succeed. After he’d circled the block three times searching for the address he couldn’t find, I’d had enough.
“Let me out here,” I said. “I’ll be fine.” I wished him well, rated him high, but couldn’t bring myself to add a tip this time, even though I knew it might affect my own rating.
The unfairness of it rankles. Uber drivers can adjust ratings of me after weighing my rating and tip. Why can’t I do the same? But progress, in the end, trumps rankles. Disruptions happen and have forever. I book my own travel, order my groceries online, and welcome Amazon into my home. And now, my sadness over the loss of the old-fashioned taxi notwithstanding, I’m hooked on the slick experience of its usurper and know I have to take the good with the bad. As long as I live through it, I’ll get an anecdote out of it. As long as I’m still alive, that’s enough for me.