A few weeks ago, in making small talk, my day job came up (counselor). As soon as my passenger heard that, she was like OMG CAN YOU GIVE ME ADVICE?! I said, sure, why not.
She wanted boundary advice for her first threesome. The one I was dropping her off at in 15 minutes.
Yes, she was hot. And a super conservatively-dressed Jewish girl.
I picked up three people in an Uber Pool today - that means you’ll have a cheaper fare if other people join. I picked up the first lady, and it sent me to another lady, then a man. I dropped off lady #2 at the mall and then remarked “both of you are going to the same Indian restaurant!” The dude said “yeah, I have a blind date.” The lady then said “I’m going on a blind date… my friend Ravi hooked me up.” Dude goes “Ravi is my cousin… He sent me on this blind date.” Turns out I had the blind daters in my car on an Uber Pool.
Omg, this drives me crazy. Sometimes I can smell it in my clothes after I get out of the cars. I don’t think the drivers can smell it anymore.
Wait, what? How?
Popped my Uber cherry today as well.
Seattle. There’s some major construction going on on the road outside our hotel and one entrance to the parking lot is blocked off, so I figured I would do the driver a sold and walk a couple of blocks down the street to a rather large and empty parking lot, hoping that would be easier to access. I made sure my location was turned on (it had it correct on the map) and called for my first ride. Not 10 seconds later my phone rings and it’s the driver, asking where I am. It shows his car still 3 or 4 blocks away and moving in my direction. Thought that was a bit weird, but whatever. The ride itself was fine.
The second driver was very talkative. We were going from the National Archives building in Seattle to the Space Needle, so it was probably a 15 or 20 minute trip. The guy would. Not. Shut. Up. about how Amazon and Jeff Bezos was ruining the city. He kept pointing at random buildings—hundreds of buildings—and complaining about how Amazon owned them and was driving everyone else out of the city. “One man! ONE MAN owns all this! Miles and miles! Half of downtown is owned by Amazon! That building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points and that building points … all owned by Bezos! ONE MAN!”
And on. And on. Uber said this guy was a “diamond”… something. I guess that means he has lots of satisfied customers. I wasn’t satisfied but I gave him a decent rating and a tip, basically because I want to get a good passenger rating too and last night’s cab ride was worse and I’m a noob so wtf do I know.
The third driver was cool, he talked about the Marvel exhibit at the pop culture museum and actually got my son to open up and talk to him. That was amazing.
So, all in all not particularly bad experiences, I saved a ton over what I would’ve paid for 3 taxi rides, and I learned that Jeff Bezos owns every single one of those buildings over there points to entire Seattle skyline.
Standard profile pics. Required of drivers, optional for passengers.
Lancia, I don’t think the driver can see who gave them what rating, but maybe one of the drivers in the thread can confirm this.
Right, I mean as a passenger I’ve never submitted a photo.
Drove two guys and their keg to a house party on Sunday.
Today was the first time I asked a rider to cancel a ride. I went to pick up at the mall and the rider was four adults with four strollers (only two kids, though???). They literally tried to talk me into bending physics and somehow getting them all into my Honda Civic when I told them they needed to cancel and pay extra for an uberXL. How cheap can you be?
Luckily, I was at a mall, so I had a replacement rider in two seconds.
Today I dropped off a guy two blocks short of his destination because he said, “let me out here, that motherf**ker owes me money.” He ran up on some dude and I skedaddled.
I was called to a bar - Miller’s Ale House - and the manager put a drunk dude in my car, with his home address entered in. Guy kept saying he was alright, he was alright, he couldn’t go home because he and his wife are fighting and he just had to clear his head and he didn’t know what to do but please don’t take him home.
I took him to Whole Foods, he said he was gonna sit in their cafe and sober up. Uber calculated the drive to his house and paid me that (it was only two miles) despite literally driving him across a parking lot.
I just tried to drive Lyft. Never again.
I went to 7-11 to start my day like always - grabbed a Big Gulp and sat outside, and opened the app. I looked for Pandora inside the app, like Uber has. There is no Pandora integration… so I downloaded and installed Pandora (I only use it on my work computer and through Uber), logged in and got it going. I then find out that Pandora hijacks the USB connection on a 2015 Civic. So I have to learn to control Pandora through the car’s interface. Annoying, but not a deal breaker yet, because Lyft is supposed to be SO much better for drivers - higher rates and tips (tips are coming to Uber this month)!
So I leave Pandora running and go online in the Lyft app. It takes a full ten minutes to get a hit, and I do. I tapped to accept. It did nothing. I tapped to accept again. It did nothing. I tapped to accept a third time and the app crashed immediately. Restarted app, ride was still available, I tapped to accept and it worked. Yay! It said “Nav Starting in 3 Seconds.” I’m like… cool, cool, it’ll navigate me there just like Uber does. It didn’t. It opened Google Maps (which I hate) and switched fully to that app. So I was driving with Google Maps, so it didn’t show me the person’s name or address or side of street anymore like Uber does. Okay, this is getting super annoying.
I arrive at the person’s house, and switch back to the Lyft app from Google Maps, after ending my trip on Google Maps (it didn’t register properly). I tapped to accept my rider. It didn’t work. I tapped again. It worked. Then it said wait two minutes for more Lyft Line riders - wtf? I don’t think more people are getting in at this house. I go to try to cancel that, and don’t remember if time ran out or if I somehow canceled that because I was pretty pissed off at this point. It then launched Google Maps and I said “alright, says we’ll have you there in 27 minutes.” She was like “??? I’m going to Main Street in Hackensack!” I said, “That’s, at most, five minutes away.” It handed the wrong address off to Google Maps and was taking me to Main Street in some other town, I checked and saw that she had it right in the Lyft app (it was showing correctly in the Lyft app). I just said to her, “This is my first Lyft ride ever, I also drive Uber and I’m never driving Lyft again, the app is terrible and I apologize. I’ll just take you to Main Street - I know exactly where you’re going - with no charge, don’t even sweat it.” She was super appreciative and wished she had money to tip me but didn’t. I was fine with that… I deleted the Lyft app at a light on the way to Hackensack and will never re-install it. When I got to her location in Hackensack and dropped her off, I opened Uber and had a rider in surge pricing in two seconds and drove him to the airport and called it a day.
I did one Uber drive and went home, I was only driving for a bit today to test out Lyft and learned all I needed to learn. I wanted to love Lyft because it’s more money for me and supposedly more socially conscious, but I just can’t stand to drive with Lyft.
Back to Uber on Wednesday.
I had to pick up two pilots at Teterboro Airport today, and I had to use the plane’s tail number to get through security. It was the strangest thing.
Today I did six rides.
The only one of note is the elderly lady who was a little confused as to who I was (daughter sent her an Uber from the grocery store to home). I had to say I was a friend of her daughter and that she sent me to get her. Also, she asked if we could make a few stops on the way home and I had to say “I’m sorry, Stephanie said bring you right home.” If tipping were active, I’d have gotten one there.
Oh! One other rider… I get to their location - the Lexus dealership. Wait a full minute. Text them. Another minute. Call them. No response. I cancel and get the $3.75 fee. As I’m a minute away, I get called by the same name to the same address (I thought the system prevented that??), and call him right away and say “I just tried to pick you up before - where actually are you? You put in the Lexus dealership.” “Oh, we’re like three blocks from there… let me edit it in the app.” WTF? You drop the little pin where you are, how do you mess that up so badly? Ended up being a $15 fare plus the $3.75 so whatever.
Uber tonight, I picked up a lady three apartment buildings from mine. She put her five-year-old in the car, buckled him in, then went back inside. She came back with a 32” TV (no stand, cables, or remotes) and placed it in the trunk like it was perfectly normal.
So, I dropped a lady off at the mall yesterday, and a guy tried to climb into my car as he pointed at the placard saying “Uber! Uber! I go to IKEA!” I was like… “You have to call for an Uber via the app. We may match and we may not. Call for Uber with the app.” I usually stalk the mall for fares, and one popped up two minutes later from his location, figured it was him, and it was. I took him and his wife three minutes across the freeway because they couldn’t figure out how to drive from the mall to IKEA - they tried twice and failed. He took a bottle of water, complained I didn’t have the right charger for his phone, and I made a whopping $3.
Gave my first one-star rating: Picked up a lady in a ritzy neighborhood where everyone I’ve ever picked up has been a complete pain in the ass. Uber sends me to 22 XYZ street, I wait two minutes and see nobody, so I message her. “Oh, I’m at 44 XYZ street.” So I head over there. She stands outside my car, arguing on the phone for three minutes before getting in. I say “It says we’re taking you to MetLife Arena?” and she grumbles yes. It says 32 minutes away, I tell her that, then she gets back on her phone to argue with someone else. She then changes the destination to her friend’s house. Friend, I guess, calls, and they argue some more, she changes it back to MetLife Arena. Then she decides to look up from her furious texting every once in awhile and contradict the GPS. I listen to the passenger, of course, because I get paid either way… But our original 32 minutes is almost up and we’re only about 2/3 of the way there. With 15 minutes remaining, she gets a phone call every two minutes asking where she is, and she keeps lying and saying Uber says they’re five minutes away. Here’s the real fun part: She wants to go to Entrance G, but passenger drop-off is at Entrance E. She had the nerve to ask me if I was going to pay $30 for parking to put her at her preferred gate so she didn’t have to walk. Couldn’t be happier to have her out of my car, 57 minutes into our 32 minute ride.
Today, in Uber: Always pay extra for uberX over uberPool. I picked up an uberPool rider for a 20 minute ride. Due to him choosing uberPool, we were together for over an hour as six other riders cycled through my car. Always pay the extra couple of bucks, unless you wanna meet strangers and waste your time.
The other day I picked up this dude Vikas at a mini mart on River Road. He sat in the front which was annoying. Then he told me the place he put in the app was closed so he needed to go elsewhere. I asked him to update it in the app and he couldn’t figure out how. I asked him how far from his stated location the right location was. It was two blocks so I dropped him off there anyway.
Just now Vikas at a mini mart on River Road popped up. Then a phone call “hey I just called for a cab but I’m not at the market like it says. I’m at my house.” “I remember you, I drove you the other day. Change the location in your app.” “I’m where you dropped me off the other day! Just come there.” “I can’t do that. Change or cancel and do over.” He couldn’t figure out how, seemingly, as I pulled over and waited two minutes. So I canceled on him and went offline to hide from him. Not the sharpest man.