The Uber driver: A memoir

By Vincent Prize

The Uber driver tells a story of one man's understudy of passengers' behavior while using rideshare. The author ferried thousands of passengers with his vehicle all over the New York metro, gaining insight into the elements of human interaction, while embracing nature and the outdoors.
This book also provides useful knowledge about the fundamenta

• Language: English
• Publisher: A Writer's World LLC
• Release date: Sep 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781087902098

Book preview

The UBER Driver

By

Vincent Prize

Published by

A Writer’s World Publishing

Disclaimer: This work is a product of fiction and real events. In situations where real events are depicted, names of those involved have been changed or removed so to protect their identity. Any resemblance in name of any one living or dead remain coincidental.

© Copy Right   2020

I

The UBER Driver

Introduction

The rideshare concept is one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century. This product became possible with the advent of the smartphone, thanks to Steve Jobs and to the improvement of the internet, and the Global Positioning Satellite, GPS. Without these, humanity would have been stuck with the ancient and moribund traditional taxis.

Uber and other rideshare companies have created employment opportunities for millions of individuals across the globe, who would have been lining up outside unemployment benefit offices in developed countries or gravitated to criminality or starvation in developing countries. These individuals have lost their jobs and possibly transitioning to new careers. Still, with no skills set, training, or education to acquire suitable employment, these are in addition to those who need additional income to survive. The final and rare group are those who are not wired to function and survive in a traditional working environment. They prefer to be their own bosses instead of exposing themselves to hateful supervisors who would breathe down their necks and have them fired after series of inadequate evaluations to justify their actions or demonic co-workers who do not like to see other humans make a living.

Once you have a new and decent vehicle, a smartphone with internet connectivity, and the will to survive, you can make a living and put food on the table for yourself and your family.

Uber drivers come from different backgrounds. It’s not uncommon to see drivers with PhDs, MDs, MScs down to GEDs plying the streets and highways, picking and dropping off passengers. We humans have unique personal situations that make us do what we have to do to survive. It could be the need to send our kids to college, buy a new house, pay off a car, save for retirement, pay off credit cards and other debts, finance a divorce, pay off that child support or equitable distribution. Human conditions vary indeed. So when I see my fellow Uber drivers in their Mercedes, BMWs, Audis, and other high-end vehicles, I tend not to be surprised. As one lovely lady passenger once said, the Mercedes will have to be paid off, right? and I agreed.

Both genders drive Uber. Some drive it full time; others drive it part-time, while there is a third group that drives only when there is an immediate need for cash, groceries, bills, or weekend fun; for the latter, they only drive for a few hours and cash out. Most of my passengers would always want to know if I drive full time or part-time, and the answer would always be, part-time, of course. Then they will reply, smart. Yes, you tell them what they want to hear. They don’t believe a sane individual can actually drive Uber or any other rideshare fulltime. It makes me wonder if they have not seen taxi drivers doing so.

Again, some passengers look down on rideshare drivers. They see rideshare drivers as dumb, uneducated, untrained, unskilled, unintelligent, and outright stupid, who take to the road out of desperation and lack of means of livelihood due to the aforementioned. However, these judging passengers don’t realize that some of these drivers possess qualifications that might take them, the driven, several lifetimes to obtain. These passengers just happened to be luckier. Just dumb luck. I hope that this book changes this misinformed and negative notion.

Of course, most people have no choice than to drive Uber full time as long as it does not exceed 12 hours per day. Without this restriction, I am sure some drivers would like to drive for 24 hours nonstop. Uber gives one the flexibility to work and make money any time one wants, in the morning, afternoon, evening, or just after midnight, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This, my friends, is the real definition of freedom. There are families where the husband will drive all night, 6 pm to 6 am, and when he gets home, the wife will use the same vehicle and drive from    6 am to 6 pm, thereby generating huge income for the family.

With the immense success of Uber, came the spring off of similar companies providing rideshare experiences to the public worldwide, from Asia, Europe to Africa and thereby alarming and indeed disturbing the already existing traditional taxi companies. These taxi drivers don’t hesitate to show their anger and grievances at the site of rideshare vehicles at the airport or even on the high way, human nature.

Apart from employment generation, rideshare companies have helped save many lives. In the past, people will drink and then drive, leading to an increased possibility of getting into an auto accident that could be fatal. With a tap on their phones, they or their friends and families can now request a ride and be taken safely home. One can easily argue that in the past, the same lifesaving operation could have equally been carried out by a taxi. But during this period before rideshare, getting a taxi to most locations and at certain times of the day was cumbersome if not outright difficult. Except if you have the phone numbers of taxi companies, you would have to physically stand by the roadside to hail down a taxi, which may never appear; imagine doing so while drunk!

As we all know, nothing in this world is perfect. Uber has continued to struggle with the human element; drivers have been accused of sexual harassment, human ritualism, false driving credentials, etc. On the other hand, for Uber drivers, as with other rideshare drivers, life is a hustle. They struggle to make ends meet or the expected monetary target for the day or week while kicking back a significant percentage of their income to their rideshare companies. Usually, drivers would have to tolerate rude passengers and are forced to drive back empty from distant locations because they are not authorized to pick up passengers from locations outside of their home domain, that is, states where they are registered to drive. Thereby wasting gas, mileage, and time, not to mention tolls accrued while driving back empty to their domain to restart the business.

So, if you are a New Jersey rideshare driver and take three hours to drive a passenger from New Jersey to Connecticut, you will have to drive back to New Jersey empty with the same three hours and possible associated tolls. Note, these are three hours you are not making any money, and for a time-sensitive business, it’s most unwelcoming. A similar fate awaits you if you get a passenger going to California! A six days journey from New Jersey.

Finally, the cost of frequent maintenance remains a considerable challenge to be addressed. Drivers do make decent living driving Uber, some as much as six figures per year. But this comes with enormous sacrifices, both personal and vehicular. The wear and tear that an Uber vehicle is exposed to from daily rides is unprecedented and can only be imagined. This leads to most of the income being spent on frequent maintenance issues such as; oil change/ every month, brake pads every three months, rotors every six months or a year, tires every six months, transmission every two years or less, engine every three years or less. Most drivers add over a hundred thousand to their car mileage every year, so it is essential to start the business with a new or relatively new car with very low mileage. Funds should be made available for frequent car wash so your car can appear clean and nice for excellent ratings and tips. Fill the gas tank every two days so you don’t run out of gas on the George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln or Holland tunnel while driving your passenger to the JFK airport to catch an international flight!!

As hinted before, passengers’ behavior towards Uber drivers varies and, in some cases, is judgmental. However, most passengers are friendly, caring, and understanding while some passengers are indifferent; these are passengers who would quickly put on their headphones, open their laptops or phones and completely ignore you or your attempts at conversing with them until they get to their destination, which at times might take two hours, then they dismount with a, Thank you and have a good day. Lastly, there are a few groups of passengers who are absolutely rude, mean, and wicked. To them, it’s personal.

I once got a ride request from a passenger in an upscale apartment in downtown Jersey City. When I arrived, she was not in sight, so I waited for the first two minutes, wasting my gas and time, yet no show. Then I continued to wait for the second and last two minutes. About three seconds to the end of these last two minutes; she decided to emerge from her paradise, taking her time to walk down the ramp. As the waiting time was up, I canceled the ride, having been prompted by the Uber driver application to do so. Since her time was up, I headed to the intersection to exit the street; she came running and pounding on my car to my amazement. Open the door, it is my ride, she yelled, attempting to jerk open my back passenger door. Suppose she was this serious in getting a ride.

Why didn’t she show up during the waiting times or even be there waiting for her ride to arrive five minutes after taping the Uber icon on her phone? Now she had to run down the street, chasing after a moving car and attempting to force the door open. Obviously, she would have made a terrible passenger with her mindset. She even called Uber to demand her No-Show fee back, about three bucks. The wrongful and misplaced sense of ownership is appalling. Some passengers think if they request an Uber ride, they automatically own the driver and his or her vehicle for the entire session. This notion remains dangerous and must be attacked by all rideshare drivers who must protect their dignity, interest, and rights.

To write this book, I quit my job, drove Uber for about two and half years, and gave rides to over ten thousand passengers, including their occasional family members, friends, co-workers, lovers, both gay and straight, classmates, etc. But only less than one percent of these passengers are depicted in this book. After which I sat down and wrote about my experiences, from the amazing to the thought-provoking. Because, if one wants to write about how it feels to have malaria, he or she should visit the tropics, get exposed to the malaria parasite, get sick, recover from it, and write all about it. One does not sit in a café in the middle of Manhattan or Paris and imagine how it feels to have malaria and attempt to write about it!! Lol.

II

…..and let the rides begin.

It was the 5th of January and a Saturday, but it rained outside, the first rain of the year. I love Saturdays; I was born on a Saturday. It is also a day for chilling all day and looking forward to the evening hours to enjoy the most favorable Saturday night hangouts in bars, restaurants, and clubs. That was in the past, now I am an Uber driver, and Saturday represents a time to make money, from morning till the late hours of the day.

So, I had my favorite breakfast; white fried eggs with hot pepper, onions, and garlic. These are often Eaten with two slices of multigrain bread and a bowl of oatmeal soaked in carnation and soy milk. Well, you might think that was a heavy breakfast, but if you have to drive none stop for twelve hours except for bathroom breaks, then it is essential to eat heavy, so you do not have to eat again till dinner. You cannot tell a passenger on a three-hour ride to Connecticut or Pennsylvania that you need to stop for a meal because you are starving.

Though it was raining, there were tons of bills to pay, and bills do not know bad weather, so I opened my door and stepped out in the rain to get to my car so that I could make a living like millions of people like me all over the world.

In the past, it would have been the best day to stay in bed and rest, possibly with a dame on my side, even catch up on old Kung Fu movies, or get ready for work for the coming week starting on the ever fast-approaching Monday, but not these days. Rain, snowstorm, or one hundred degrees Fahrenheit heat does not stop me. I am a soldier of fortune; at least I see myself that way.

I got into my car, connected with the ever-busy Bloomfield Avenue in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and headed eastwards towards downtown Newark, New Jersey. Then, I got my first ride request of the day.

Mata was a beautiful Latino lady in her mid-thirties with all the bodily blessings from heaven; the day she was created, the angels must have been in their happiest mood. She was already waiting for me under an umbrella she was holding with her left hand; good girl, I thought, I didn’t have to wait for 5 minutes for this one. She nicely opened the back passenger door with her right hand, stepped in, and sat down while folding and putting away her umbrella. I could smell the sweet scent of her expensive perfume. Who is the lucky guy? I wondered. So, I decided to strike a conversation, but I saw she was bent over her phone as if praying with a rosary, a common sight with this generation that eventually contributed to the demise of contemporary social interaction between humans.

Some days, I have had up to four passengers in pool rides all bent over their phones in holy electronic rosary sessions!! Resulting in a very silent ride indeed. You going to Penn Station? I asked her. I couldn’t resist anymore, as I made a right turn onto Broad street Newark, the central axis of downtown Newark.

Newark is not complete without Broad Street. Everything happened to be a few minutes from Broad Street. The City Hall, the Federal Building housing the immigration, FBI, and other agencies, the Prudential Building, the Prudential Center, the Penn Station, Rutgers University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, the Courts; family or otherwise, St. Michaels Hospital, Symphony Hall, New Jersey theater center, NJ Pack and lots of shops. Even the great Westinghouse electric manufacturing company used to reside beside the now Broad street train station, though it has now been demolished.

At the end of Broad Street sits the Newark International Airport. No, Market street, she replied. Market Street is an important street that intersects Broad Street and leads to the Penn Station (a major train station for all kinds of trains from the Amtrak, New Jersey transit to the Path train) in one direction and the court buildings and Halls of record in the other direction. I made a left on to Halsey Street and left on Market Street, then dropped Mata off after the intersection. Thanks and have a good day, she said, disembarking and disappearing into the ever-busy Market street crowd. It had stopped raining, and the sun was out again, soaking up the rainwater from the ground and getting drunk with it. Soon, it will appear as if it never rained.

I spent the next two hours giving rides to pool passengers. These are people who want quality transportation with the least fare by choosing to ride with others, mainly strangers. Better than what the bus or train can provide.

At this point, I didn’t mind, but what I minded was a pool ride to or from the airport. These were cheaper than the cheapest. For instance, three days earlier, while I roamed at the Newark International Airport, I received a pool ride request, I was desperate for a ride, and I had only two minutes to roam, so I accepted it. I took the ramp leading back to the airport terminals and headed to terminal C, pick up three, as displayed on my Uber Driver app. At first, she was nowhere to be seen, so I parked my car safely and waited. Being a pool ride, she had only two minutes of waiting time before I could cancel for no-show and get rewarded with three bucks for my time and gas.  After about a minute and half of waiting, a tan-skinned, lightweight lady of average height, in her early thirties with a redhead to match, approached the car from pick-up-four passenger stand. Now, that wasn’t very pleasant. People should stick to their pick up door. Pick up three should be pick up three, and pick up four, should remain, pick up four. I picked her up anyway and drove off, heading to the airport exits wondering why a sophisticated lady as she was could be so cheap.

Airport pool rides should be reserved for poor airport workers who are getting off shifts and heading home in or around Newark. This lady was heading towards Secaucus, a relatively mid to high-income area. I mean, if you have sufficient money to go on a vacation, you should have enough money to get home from the airport with your luggage; why try to save a buck or two at the expense of the poor rideshare driver who needs to eat too? I was thinking about all these while steering my car towards 1&9 North exit on the left when she suddenly announced in a commanding tone, Take the turnpike!

The New Jersey turnpike is iconic. It’s a four-lane mega highway in either direction. It runs across New Jersey, taking over from Interstate 95 South as soon as it emerges from the George (the George Washington bridge) and ends at the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where Interstate 95 takes up the mantle once again and runs all the way to Miami, passing through the corridors of power in DC, after branching off to Philadelphia via Interstate 295, cutting the travel distance and time down to less than half to most parts of New Jersey.

This ever-busy mega highway is so essential and iconic to New Jersey that it was featured in famous TV shows and movies that were filmed in the state. But nothing good comes free. For individuals to enjoy this amazing landmark, drivers are encouraged to pay their tolls or get fined two hundred percent more. So, driving a pool, avoiding major highways, especially those tolled, is a no brainer. It becomes challenging to get off the highway after paying a toll, so to pick up another passenger on a pool and pay another toll to get back in. No, this is a pool ride, and getting on the highway makes it difficult to pick up other pool passengers, I enlightened her. I have to be at work in forty minutes, she replied. Really? I pondered.

You come back from vacation in a hurry to get home, drop your luggage, and head to work in a few minutes. The first thing you did was to request a pool ride. With plans to play the driver by asking him or her to take the highway to avoid any other passenger from getting in, so you can arrive faster at a pool ride rate but getting a regular Uber service, thereby diminishing the income of the driver. Smart. You paid for a pool ride, but you received an Uberx service. Most passengers are sneaky. When they start playing smart, then you should start thinking about outsmarting them. That’s human nature. You should have requested for a regular ride, a few more dollars, but if you are in a hurry and need to get to work, that’s what you do, I continued my instruction.

I made a quick left to join the Pulaski Skyway, another New Jersey icon, with the statue of the carpet man holding a folded carpet at the base of the Skyway.

The Pulaski Skyway, which was opened in 1932, was named after General Kazimier Michal Wladyslaw Wiktor Pulaski, a hero of the American Revolutionary war and a polish nobleman exiled to America; many more streets and highways are named after him. The Pulaski Skyway is an amazing assemblage of all types of steels, including stainless steel and, of course, concrete. Creating a huge and long metallic bridge-like structure with a total length of 3.502 miles and crossing the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers, the Kearny points, and the New Jersey Meadowlands. It spans from Jersey City to Newark, just a mile or two from the airport. Looking at it from a distance, it looked like a very long and huge black dragon, with its head in Jersey City and tail in Newark, enough to daze and mesmerize the faintly hearted. It is a direct link from the Holland tunnel under the Hudson River, separating New York and New Jersey to the Newark International airport.

For passengers and drivers coming into New Jersey from Manhattan to catch a flight from the Newark International airport, it’s indeed a direct linkage, literally creating a bridge between Jersey City and Newark, eliminating traffic conditions, lights, stop signs, and of course, cops.

Approaching the end of this metallic beauty, on the Jersey City side, I got a request for an additional pool passenger to be picked up. I am branching off to pick up an additional passenger, I announced. Oh, no! she exclaimed. Yeah, it is what it is, I explained. I won’t take pool next time from the airport, she said regrettably. I was satisfied that she got the message and headed to get my new passenger. On our way to the Secaucus train station for the additional passenger, she told me all about her vacation in Texas with her boyfriend; no wonder the tan, I thought. True, Texas is a great state with lots of sunshine, oil, and meat, and I am sure she must have had a great time.

By the time we got to the train station, there was no passenger to be picked up, so I waited. Towards the end of the two minutes waiting time, the prospective passenger called to tell me he was still on the train, coming from New York and if I could wait a few more minutes. Really?! This individual was no doubt part of a generation of new money brats, who make tons of money in the City (New York City), but can’t afford to pay for the notoriously expensive apartment rentals in and around Manhattan, but rather took the cheaper option of renting less expensive living spaces in New Jersey and commute to and from work.

Interestingly, most of them also take the cheaper pool option when it comes to land transportation from train stations to their apartments and maybe also order pizza for dinner. This behavior was indeed a selfish act on his part, so I promptly canceled the ride for no show, to the great relief of my female passenger who has already started making a last-minute effort to change her ride from pool to Uberx (regular ride), but it was too late to change. Heading to drop her off at her destination, I told her a story of a similar pool ride from the airport three months earlier, on a Saturday morning.

The rider then was a middle-aged black woman, once a beauty at an earlier age and time, with no luggage and heading to the Sports Gambling arena in Secaucus. She probably flew in on a non-stop flight to Newark just to gamble, but she was trying to save a few bucks with the Uber pool, so it seemed. She was lucky that no other passenger asked to be picked up on the way, and the drive was so smooth that when we got to the arena, where two more passengers were waiting for me, she was so excited about my driving skills that she gave me a hefty tip and told my new passengers about my unmatched driving acumen while noting my plate number for possible high remarks. So much for saving money, I thought.

I became even more confused about why people opt to take the pool. We humans are complicated. I finally dropped off my Texas vacationer at her dwelling and asked if she thought she could still make it to her job on time. I will try, she replied. Thanks for the ride anyway, she added. I wished her good night and drove off into the night to give yet another ride.

Secaucus, New Jersey has a lot to offer for fun lovers, and in the last couple of years, has become an arena for the display of the American wealth, born out of extreme capitalism. In Secaucus, you can find the MetLife stadium, a vast sporting Arena with a capacity of over five million spectators; also, as discussed above, there is the Sports Gambling complex located two minutes from the MetLife stadium.

The Sports Gambling complex receives a constant stream of visitors with an allure of easy money and the risk that comes with it, and they come from all over. Additionally, in Secaucus is the Meadowland, a designated area of Secaucus. Once occupied by the New Jersey Meadowlands, a rich and vibrant ecosystem that has a resemblance to the marshland, with its characteristic tall grasses called phragmites (common reeds), and stalky green-white flowers called asphodel which emanates from the wetlands. Most of these interesting ecosystems have been replaced by luxurious high-end Hotels and apartments surrounded by large shopping centers crowded by re-known American departmental stores. A few months ago, Secaucus got a new inhabitant, a landmark called the American Dream.

The American Dream is said to be the largest shopping mall on the east coast of the United States. Still, it’s not just a mall; it’s a massive playground for adults and children with its indoor ski slopes, a Nickelodeon Universe theme park with roller coasters, DreamWorks Water Park, and many more attractions. It took almost twenty years to complete this mega mall, boasting of 450 store outlets. New Jersey residents love to shop. New Jersey is crowded with malls, strip malls, and substantial stand-alone departmental stores. Yet, the hunger to shop has not been extinguished; its designers hope that the American Dream will meet this expectation and located just a few minutes from Manhattan; it is indeed the capitalist dream.

Driving on the New Jersey turnpike, or NJ route 3, you can soak-in the colossal grandeur of this edifice. While being driven past this mall, many of my passengers wondered if this mall was well-conceived, and if the designers did not foresee the gradual demise of the brick and mortar mall and the advent of online shopping two decades ago when the concept was put on paper. Nevertheless, there is money to be made and jobs to be created. Most of the leading workers were brought in from Canada while the low-level workers were sourced locally.

A few months ago, on a dreary Friday evening, while the mall was being completed, I was coming from Union City and heading home on NJ 3 West, I got a ride request from a pickup location in Secaucus, at one of those expensive luxurious apartments built for the New Money dwellers who mostly work in New York but live in New Jersey, a three minutes train ride across the Hudson. Jeff was smoking a cigarette when I arrived but quickly put it off; he was a strong, tall, about 6 feet, muscular, well-built man, with olive skin, possibly in his late fifties.

I observed that he was well kept, considering his hair, designer jeans, shirt, and perfume, which meant money. Good evening, sir, and where are you heading today? I asked him politely as he stepped into the car and sank onto the passenger back seat. Newark airport, please, he replied abruptly. We began the trip, but I noticed he had no luggage; I became more curious, You picking up a friend or relative? I asked again. I am heading to Toronto, Canada for the weekend; I will be back Monday morning, he replied. Cool, you from Canada? I asked yet again, trying to keep the conversation alive. Yes, I came here to build this mall, he said, pointing at the American Dream. I am a structural engineer, I have families in Canada, and so every weekend I go to see them, he added. Great. An amazing life. I wished I was Jeff; his employer is probably paying all expenses. Nice.

I like your perfume, what’s the name? I quarried curiously, and he told me the name of his sweet-smelling perfume, which I have seen on magazines and outlets, but never knew it smelt so good. Great, I will put that on the shopping list for my next visit to Macy’s. Don’t miss the turnpike entrance, Jeff reminded me as I navigated my car towards the NJ turnpike ramp, leaving the NJ 3 West behind. Thanks, I replied. But taking the NJ turnpike to the airport meant a bit faster route to the airport, though coming with an unnecessary and avoidable toll, an alternative route would have been two minutes slower but free.

However, most passengers would rather pay five dollars in toll than be two minutes late.

Two minutes is nothing for a man who has one and a half hours to wait at the airport. But that was his choice and money, so he got what he wanted. I get refunded