Ride-Hailing Is a Four-Letter Word

By Brigitte Pellerin

Everybody knows what it’s like to ride in an Uber. But who knows what it feels like to drive one?

I do.

After significant changes in my personal circumstances I found myself, as they say, between opportunities. I own a car, I have a clean record, heartless algorithms don’t scare me; see where I’m going with this?

This books chronicles a year of driving for Uber and Lyft. How I did it, how much I got paid, and what lessons I learned about our society’s costly dependence on convenience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brigitte Pellerin
• Release date: Oct 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463652183

Brigitte Pellerin

Brigitte Pellerin is a columnist with the Ottawa Citizen and the author of Épître aux tartempions, Down the Road Never Travelled and Not Just for Kicks, among others. She has three kids and a car that mostly doesn’t go anywhere anymore.

Book preview

Ride-Hailing is a Four-Letter Word

A Year in the Life of an Uber Driver

Brigitte Pellerin

Copyright 2020 Brigitte Pellerin

Smashwords Edition

Remember life before the pandemic? Ah. How easy we had it. We embraced people, went places, attended concerts, sent kids to school. We didn’t worry about any of these things, about how they could kill us or make us lose our job. More than anything else I think that’s what we miss and grieve the most. Our casual, careless attitude towards daily mundane stuff, like whether or not now would be a good time to get our nails done.

We moved around like crazy, often for thoroughly unproductive reasons. We may have thought about the costs or the time involved in getting somewhere, but we sure never bothered with our impact on public health.

Yeah, OK, I’ll go get my nails done. Why wouldn’t I?

Now we know why not. But back then, there were no reasons.

Some people think we should have been able to avoid COVID-19, or at least minimize its impact on our day-to-day life. I disagree. I’m among the folks who have long believed that our world was entirely too exposed to pandemics. We travel too much, and we spend inordinate amounts of time in closed buildings with recirculated air. Anything nasty gets loose, we all catch it.

A pandemic of this nature and nastiness was not a question of if, but of when. Now at least we know what kind of fight we’re in. And I’m sorry to say that our old ways will be among the casualties.

The pandemic is forcing us to rethink how we work, play, and fail to congregate. Suddenly we’re home, a lot. Whatever it is we do, we do it right where we are.

There are no concerts to go to. We’re fearful of shopping malls. Dinner parties are a thing of the past — at any rate, they should be. It seems like all the fun has been sucked out of our lives, along with stylish haircuts, dress pants and heel shoes.

As I write this the contours of the New Normal are still hazy, except for one thing: Whatever it is we settle on for the remainder of 2020 and a good chunk of 2021, it will not involve nearly as much transportation as it used to. The changes we are making now will be with us for some time.

And that’s bad news for people who make a living driving others. In May 2020 Uber announced it was laying off nearly 15 percent of its global workforce while Lyft, its closest competitor, also announced massive layoffs.

The companies are deeply affected by the pandemic. Not only is there less demand, but attracting and retaining drivers is a challenge because few people are brave (or desperate) enough to take a job whose very essence is to be in close contact with strangers.

There are no reliable statistics available as of the summer of 2020 for how many Uber and Lyft drivers have been infected or died from COVID-19. But nothing in the headlines and what we know so far suggests they as a group will escape the virus any more than the next group of vulnerable workers. Same with taxi drivers, by the way. Sharing confined space with lots of different people is an inherently dangerous business these days. It’s hard for drivers to protect themselves, even if they’re wearing masks and Lysoling their car between each ride.

All I can say is, I feel for those people, already among the more vulnerable segment of the workforce. And man, am I glad I no longer count myself among them.

I HAVE NOT DRIVEN for either company since late 2019. In fact as I write these lines my accounts have been suspended because I did not renew my security check. I figure I’m done with it for good. That’s fine by me. I don’t think I’ll miss it.

Before the pandemic hit I was in the process of writing a book about life as an Uber and Lyft driver. I’d already written a French version of that story last summer and found a publisher for it. All was well in the best of possible worlds, so of course, boom.

Not only is the world different because of COVID-19, but as it turns out ride-hailing companies aren’t the only ones hurting. Book publishers are struggling, too. As far as I can tell pretty much everything is at a standstill, and we don’t know when, if ever, normal operations will resume.

I was suddenly faced with a difficult choice: Do I finish the English version of my Uber book and shop it around even though I know perfectly well nobody’s buying these days and even if they were they wouldn’t buy something that won’t resonate in the New Reality? Do I finish it then wait for normalcy to return, which it probably won’t? Do I just give up on it?

I decided on a different option: To shorten the manuscript by removing the stuff that’s no longer relevant, and publish whatever remains on my own. I’ve self-published a few books before, mostly things for a specific group of people rather than the general public, but still, self-publishing is not nearly as hard as real publishers make it out to be. Especially if you are blessed with eagle eyes and a keen attention to detail. Also, if you don’t really care whether you’ll be making any money.

Decision made. Rather than wait for the world to return to a place where it might be interested in the narrative I’d written, I adapted the story to the new reality and let it loose. We’ll see where it goes.

Uber

Everybody knows what it’s like to ride an Uber. That’s the super easy part. You begin by getting yourself stranded somewhere, then hail a car and ride it to your destination. You don’t even need to touch money. Like, it works, right?

But who knows what it feels to be the driver?

I do. Maybe you do, too. I spent a little over a year driving both for Uber and Lyft while I rebuilt my life at the end of several years during which my marriage was slowly dying of unhappiness and related causes. For reasons we don’t need to get into, I found myself without assets beyond a car and a little bit of money with which to furnish my new nest.

My goal was to return to a writing career after a long break from the traditional workforce. I left my last real job in 2013, because I couldn’t keep up with the schedule of full-time homeschooling and full-time work on no sleep.

I was a homeschooler between 2006 and 2018. In there I also managed to work more or less full-time until 2013, when I collapsed for good of my fourth burnout, a lifetime achievement of sorts. Between 2014 and 2018 I helped launch my ex’s career as a filmmaker.

By the time I left the house in 2018 I had not been independently employed since 2013. I was also in my late 40s. Where was I supposed

Reviews for Ride-Hailing Is a Four-Letter Word

[Donna Slater · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not much of a writer. Doesn't like people. ** **