Anthology of an Uber Driver’S Experiences

By Burton Hochberg

After driving for Uber for a short time, I realized that I had the fodder for another book. Unique stories were happening in my car every day. I did not start out with the thought of eventually writing or even publishing a book. All I did was to build files with anecdotal material. I called the files Uberisms.

Upon conclusion of the first file, I printed copies of it and distributed it to my riders while continuing to write Uberism: Book2. I repeated the process I started, and upon conclusion of the second chapter, I printed copies of it to distribute to my riders. That became an expensive process. Since these files could be found on Facebook, I just chatted with my riders about Uberisms and told them how to access them on the computer. It was at that point that I gave consideration to publishing a book.

At that point, the number of individual Uberisms reached five files, totaling about seventy-five thousand words, and it was time to publish my works, but I needed an all-encompassing title. That was the birth of Analogy of an Uber Drivers Experiences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524602000

Burton Hochberg

I was born and raised in New York. I moved to Chicago with my family in 1970. After leaving job that brought me here thirteen years later, I explored many entrepreneurial opportunities until I retired in 2010. Needing something to do to occupy my time, I wrote my autobiography for my personal and family use. Following its conclusion, I needed to do something productive to keep busy. I learned about Uber and felt I was a natural for it. Back in the 1980s, I drove a limo for about five years and loved it. Uber seemed to be a natural for me. The rest is history.

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© 2016 Burton Hochberg. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/15/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-0201-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-0200-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016905558

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

A message from the author

Uberisms -- Book 1

Uberisms -- Book 2

Uberisms -- Book 3

Uberisms -- Book 4

Uberisms -- Book 5

A MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR

I have had the most interesting experiences in the past two and a half years driving for Uber. About five years ago I retired and quickly became very bored doing nothing all day. One can only sleep so late in the morning, go to discussion groups and listen to people who know little or nothing about the subject matter and just wanted to hear themselves talk, going food shopping and losing my appetite over the current food prices or doing something that would be productive.

I decided on the latter. The toughest thing was to determine what that activity would be. It was then when I decided to write my autobiography. It was a subject that I was very familiar with and the best part was I did not have to do any research. The book contains over 80,000 words and consumes about 200 pages. It was a lot of fun. I started remembering things that were long forgotten. Now that the book was completed, I needed to find something else to do.

Listening to the car radio one day, I heard a brief discussion about this thing called Uber. That was right up my alley because back in the Eighties, my son and I partnered up and drove limos. Problem solved! I went down to see Mr. Uber, did whatever I was supposed to do and in about a week, I was driving for Uber. That was over two and a half years ago. When I tell that story to my riders, a few of them ask if there really is a Mr. Uber.

After a short period of time that I was driving, I realized all sorts of material for another book just fell into my lap, thus the genesis of, Anthology of an Uber Driver's Experiences. It started out being called, Uberisms. The combining of the five books of Uberisms required an all-inclusive title. What you will read is going to be each section as it was written and distributed to my riders. There may have been some editing but basically the flavor is the same.

Thank you for subscribing to my book. I will donate a portion of the royalties received to The MS SOCIETY.

UBERISMS -- BOOK 1

A SERIES OF HUMOROUS TALES OF AN UBER DRIVER AS WELL AS A FORMER LIMO DRIVER

IT'S THE SAME PERSON WEARING TWO HATS

READ A LITTLE AND LAUGH A LOT

Disclaimer, Forward and Author's Notes

(All rolled into one)

This is meant to be a compilation of my experiences as a limo driver and as a driver for Uber. The events are real, the experiences are real, but however, the names and places are purely fictional in order to protect the innocent participants, as well as some of the guilty ones, as you will soon see. This is to be considered for its fun value and should not be taken as an indictment of anything. There will be an overload of Joes, Johns, Marys and Janes. Believe it or not, these will be real people having real life experiences. Please remember, only the names and places have been fictionalized.

There are decidedly many differences in the experiences encountered in the limo business as opposed to driving for a company like Uber. Approximately 30 or so years ago, my son Steven and I owned two luxury stretch limos. We drove them for about 3 or 4 years before going on to other endeavors. It was fun and I will share some of those experiences with you as well. Again, the names are figments of my imagination but the stories are true.

When one decides to enter the limo business, you either try to generate a base of clients on your own or get connected with an established firm that will contract with you to service their customer base. We chose the latter. However, during our tenure with the established company, we were able to create a small base of business of our own. We worked the limo business very diligently for a few years and were fairly successful. However, the long hours required to earn enough money in order to pay off the leases on 2 $ 60,000.00 vehicles and have something left over, took its toll on both of us. During that period the money was good but hours were brutal.

Driving for Uber is an entirely different story. The opportunity they offer is unique. One makes their own schedule. Through trial and error, I developed a schedule that enabled me to work sufficient hours to earn what I anticipated and not overextend myself. It is a part-time job with full-time satisfaction.

The experiences I talk about are very real, but that is only half the story. I was retired and for a number of good reasons which anyone in my position will understand, needed to have something productive to do. A long list of potential employers for anyone my age (77 at this writing), with limited technological skills, just did not exist. I heard about Uber and almost immediately partnered (that is what they call their drivers) with them. I cannot verbalize enough praise for them. They offered me a means to a significant income and a variety of experiences which I have enjoyed driving for Uber. These experiences are core of my book.

This preface, which I am writing in August of 2014, is after about 10 months of experience with Uber. When I started working with them I was a bit frustrated because I was not as familiar with Chicago as was needed to have a seamless experience driving, but time and experience solved that problem. Almost! I have never avoided asking a customer for directions if I needed them to successfully complete the trip. I tried to accomplish this in a few very subtle ways. For instance: I suggest that they do the navigating and I will do the driving; I asked if they prefer a certain route to reach their destination; or the most common plea I have used continuously since day 1 (10 months ago), and continue to use today, I am sort of a rookie at this and can you help me with the directions. Without exception, the customers were always willing to be helpful. One of my riders once explained to me that Uber customers realize that we are not taxicab drivers and may have limited experience in getting around Chicago. The customer base is a compilation of some of the greatest people I have ever met. You will meet some of them as well, as we revisit some of my noteworthy experiences.

Uber, thanks to their creative genius, have made numerous improvements in the less than the first year of my tenure. They have improved their software whereby drivers can easily find paths to their customers as well as to their customer's destinations. This single tool has dramatically cut down the time needed to reach the customer and deliver the service they need.

My family and friends were not surprised that I was working again, but who or what was Uber? When I explained the program, many of the folks I told thought it was a great idea and wished me luck. They knew I was a people person and having experience driving the limo, this was perfect for me. Then there were the normal group of nay sayers who would have thought walking on the moon was a waste of time. All I know is that I feel alive again; I am enjoying myself as well as making some money. Money is good.

These little vignettes are meant to share some of my experiences with you and your friends. Its sole purpose is to add a little light reading to your day and perhaps put a smile on your face. It was FREE and worth every penny you paid for it! (This policy will continue until Anthology is published and made available in book form as well as online). This will be announced on Facebook as well as other social networks. By subscribing to Anthology, you are supporting two very worthwhile causes. (They are the MS SOCIETY and me.). In addition to the many humorous tales that you will encounter, there are some that will tug at your heart. This is real life and as you probably know, life is not just a bowl of cherries. I hope you enjoy reading Anthology and it will give you a chuckle or two. You might even recognize yourself in one of the stories. If you did enjoy it, please pass it on through your social network. If for any inconceivable reason you didn't like it, pass it on anyway.

Thanks for reading at least this much.

THE STORY (OR BETTER PUT, THE STORIES)

Since working for Uber, I must have taken 2000 to 2500 trips. (Now it is excess of 7000) With very few exceptions they have all been wonderful and enjoyable experiences. Some have been completely neutral. By neutral I mean it was just like warm vanilla ice cream. What could be more neutral than warm vanilla ice cream? You can't eat it, you don't want to drink it and you can't just throw it away because it will make too much of a mess. If you came from my generation, your mother probably told you to finish everything on your plate because children in Europe were starving. I could never understand what the correlation was between me leaving uneaten, ugly looking and tasteless cauliflower on my plate and the starving children in Europe.

Anyway, vanilla people are very boring, so let's get them out of the way first. A vanilla person is one who gets into the car without any type of greeting and tells you their destination. Usually, it is in a grumpy monotone voiced old fart. I prayed that they knew where they wanted to go and they shared that information with me in a manner that was understandable on their first try. If I had to ask them another question about the destination, they might go into cardiac arrest. They would be forced to talk to me. The trip was usually spent with the personality minus passenger reading, pondering his next exciting activity or playing with some type of electronic gadget. Upon conclusion of an autopsy on one of these vivacious personalities, I am sure they will find rust on their larynx.

Very significant portions of my customer base are folks who are part of the future generation. I am convinced that the future generation will be blessed with the strongest thumbs known to mankind. No one talks to each other anymore, they just text. I have observed almost the entire population of brilliant millennials crossing a street without looking up. How were people of my generation able to cross a street without texting? Were they experiencing some type of divine intervention telling them it was safe to cross the street without looking up?

Now they can text to a countless number of people anywhere in the world, at the same time. They can receive an equal number of texts simultaneously. Now that is progress.

My ten-month experience with Uber has resulted in only two experiences with passengers I would qualify as full blown jerks. The first experience came during my initial week with Uber. It was quite a challenging start to my Uber career. I picked up Jerk #1 from a very fancy address on North City Parkway. He got into the car and gave me the name of some rinky-dink bar and expected me to take him there without any additional information. No, he did not want to go to The Pyramids in Egypt or some other famous place, so I very politely asked him for an address. He reluctantly gave me the information. I got lucky with this one! I happen to know where the address would be. During the trip, he started snapping his fingers at me and insisted that any cab driver in this town knew where every business was and wouldn't have to bother the passenger for an address.

I had two answers prepared for this jerk. The one I really liked would probably have gotten me fired so I took a pass on that one. What I did share with my passenger was that all of these brain surgeon cabbies that he was referring to all had their first week. Then I told him that this was my first week. It probably went way over his head and the balance of the trip was spent in an eerier silence.

Well, that's it for Jerk #1. Let's talk about Jerk #2. This guy was one for the books. I picked up this gentleman about midnight one Saturday evening on a side street about 3 or 4 blocks off the main drag. He got into the car drinking a can of Red Bull. From the way he was acting, he must have had a few earlier that evening. He identified where he wanted to go and off we went. I had to turn off his side street in order to reach the aforementioned main drag. As we turned the corner, we could see there was a green light on the boulevard that we were headed to which was about three blocks away and each intersection had a stop sign.

I was very strongly encouraged by my Red Bull wired passenger not to stop at the stop signs because he had to make the green light. Since he was not the one that would have gotten the ticket for violating a stop sign and it was not his automobile insurance rates that would increase in price due to the ticket, I decided to stop at each corner. Granted, it was not the type of stop that is taught in driving school, but it did pass the slowdown temporarily test. I could not imagine what was so important about making that particular green light. If we missed it, there would be another one in 20 to 30 seconds. It so happens we made the green light and I thought that would make him and his Red Bull happy. Wrong! We were now on Addison St. and were accompanied by very little traffic.

I did take some liberties with the speed limit but apparently not enough to make Mr. Red Bull happy. He started shouting in my ear for me to observe how fast the taxi cabs were going and I should be keeping up with them. I was boiling on the inside but cool as a cucumber on the outside. I could not wait to get rid of him and find a normal passenger to serve. We finally reached his destination and he attempted to exit my car while it was still moving in the middle of bumper to bumper cross traffic. He survived the dangerous exit and I moved on. Since the drivers rate the passengers, as well as the passengers have the opportunity to rate the drivers, I rated Jerk #1 and Jerk #2 with 1. A 1 rating for these people was grossly overstated but that was the lowest rating available on a scale of 1 to 5.

That was enough discussion of Jerks 1 and 2. They took up too much ink as well as time. I had 2 other experiences with folks who could be classified as Semi-Jerks that I would like to share.

One Saturday night/Sunday morning at about 3 AM, I was on my way home. When I am ready to call it a day, I head for The Kennedy Expressway and in about 30 minutes or so I would be in bed sawing wood. I forgot to turn off the phone that connected me with Uber's customers. The phone started chirping, indicating a call. I have always been in a service business so I took the call and planned to sign off at its conclusion.

I picked up 2 young ladies, who could be classified as Semi-Jerk 1 and 1a from a bar and when I asked their destination, I was told to just drive south. Their words were slurred and every other word started with an f. Finally after a fairly lengthy trip and me now knowing what their destination was, one of the semi jerks uttered, I don't feel well. We were 3 blocks from their destination and I made it in warp speed. Success! They exited the car and left it just the way they found it. No Harm-No Foul!

Let's now meet semi-jerks 2 and 2a. Two young males got in the car and told me what their destination was. They were either totally plastered or the best actors in the world. At the beginning of the trip, they behaved just as two happy drunks would behave. That lasted for about a nanosecond. Whenever we came to an intersection where the light was red, they managed to lower the window and yell some filth out to people on the street. I was concerned that they might upset some six foot, 300-pound wrestler with a similar vocabulary, especially when the object of their language was directed to their female companions. I pulled away from the scene of the shared dialog and stopped the car. I gave these two budding juvenile delinquents 2 choices. They were to shut up or get out. The balance of the trip was spent in silence. I guess they chose the initial choice. That is enough of the negative, though enjoyable (I hope) dialogue. Let's continue by being positive and enjoy some fun experiences.

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I recently had the first baby in my car. No, the mother did not give birth in the car. The mother carried her 3 month old daughter into the car. This adorable child smiled ear to ear as I assisted her mom with that chore. Once in the car, her mother had to make some seating adjustments for the two of them to ride comfortably. The sudden movements caused the baby to start crying and made sure everyone know she was not very pleased. G-d bless the inventor of the pacifier. That solved the problem all the way home. I mentioned that I was writing this book and would be using all fictitious names. I would reference Baby Marion without using her name. Marion's mom gave her permission to use her real name and made sure I spelled her name with an o.

Someday, if the tunnel visioned legislators of our fair state don't screw things up; Baby Marion might just have her own Uber Account.

Doesn't, Baby Marion sound like a character from Robin Hood?

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Only in America can one go from an inexperienced anything to being recognized as a genius of their profession. With an enormous amount of humility pouring from my keyboard, I am referring to me. One of my first calls that I ran for Uber one early morning in October 2013 was relatively simple. Go to 840 West Blackhawk St. and pick up John and take him wherever he wanted to go. Simple! Perhaps it was for most but not for me. I was so flustered that every turn I took on my maiden voyage was the wrong turn. Somehow, perhaps with a stroke of luck or divine intervention, I found the address, or so I thought. There were 2 buildings, side by side that looked alike except that only one had a driveway. Something had to go right for me, so I took a guess and proceeded to the building with the driveway. I was right! From that moment on I was an expert on 840 and 860 West Blackhawk St. I knew if I got a call to 840, there was a driveway and if the call was to 860, the customer was forced to meet me at the curb.

Recently, on a very rainy day, I answered a call for a customer who wanted to go to 860 West Blackhawk St. I was in all my glory. It was raining so hard that I could hardly see the road. To give you an idea of how hard it was raining, the last time it rained this hard, Noah was looking for a hammer and nails.

I suggested a route to take and the customer agreed. She graciously complimented me on my knowledge of the city. She indicated she was required to give other drivers specific turn by turn directions. Now I was on a roll. I had a happy customer thinking I knew my way around the city. I had to play this up for all it was worth. I shared my abundance of knowledge about the location by indicating that it was unfortunate that there was no driveway for her building. She burst my balloon by telling me there was a driveway for her building and she would be happy to show it to me. I was humbled by this experience and mentioned to her of my intention to write this book and will include this story

The following day I had a fare starting from the same building. I told the gentleman about my experience the day before and wanted to show off my newly acquired superior knowledge. He was pleased to be the beneficiary of my acumen on that topic. He said that I was the first Uber driver to use the driveway. WOW! Such a deal!

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A worldwide marketing company has their offices in Chicago. They are known for marketing bargains. Buy one get one free or at a discount kind of stuff. They have a very large presence in Chicago. Their employees represent a significant number of customers for Uber. With rare exception, the employees of this company that I have chauffeured around have been of the distaff variety. However, whenever I question some