Well, I was really needing some cash. The risk with client work is sometimes I will run a tab with them, so it could be a few months out before they pay, and even when they do, the business income normally goes to cover the business expenses. I, Ellice, was the one who needed cash. My personal cash flow was/is slow during the pandemic, and I was putting stuff on my credit card, like groceries. I am vegan, so I am sure my food cost more than GMO-meat. Well, the credit card bill was getting bigger, and so was the interest slapped on month by month. The interest could be enough to pay for groceries. 

So, I got an email from Uber. I tried driving for them a few years back; it was just like three days of driving. It was tough, disgusting work, and did not pay much with Uber taking about 40% of a fare, plus the cost of gas, and the wear and tear of the car, and having to deep clean the car from crazy muddy people (why were they muddy?). Also, trying to chase the surge pricing made thing worse. Anyways, that was not any way to make money. It was more of like Uber was a bee keeper scooping out all the honey, after me doing the hard work. I stopped.

In this email, they offered to pay $250 for 5 drives. I thought, okay, that actually could be worth the risk. I now drive a Model 3 and I like my car being clean. I don’t drive much these days due to most things being remote, but before the pandemic I would detail clean my car every weekend. I actually do love driving my car; it is a breeze.  Actually, the car’s name is Galen (“the wind”).

I have solar panels, so energy from my house is basically free. I wanted to drive no more than my house charge would do. I did not want to spend money on energy in an attempt to make money for a job.

Here is a re-cap of the unpleasant experience.

Week 1

I went out for the five drives. 

First Drive

The first drive was okay. I was shocked at how appreciative the woman was to get a ride home. Since it was my first drive in years, I did not know the COVID protocol was that the passengers should have been in the back seat, but at least she wore a mask. I don’t think I got a tip, but the lady also mentioned how happy she was to feel safe in the car. I surmise that she must have had some creepy drivers before. I don’t think it is that hard to shower, brush your hair, and wear decent clothing, but maybe that is a thing for Uber drivers who don’t have other jobs. She also mentioned how there weren’t many drivers on that part of town (frankly, the poor side), and it took a long time to get a match. I kind of felt bad about the inequity of the situation for her, but after some more drives, I understood why that part of town had less drivers… it’s just too difficult to make money, get surges, get tips, the drivers are just trying to make a living and literally can’t do it there.

2nd & 3rd Drive – Smokers

Unfortunately, the 2nd and 3rd drives, back to back, were cigarette smokers. Since I needed to complete five drives, I did not want to cancel them. In this first act, I lost some of my power and free will. I would never let a smoker in my car under normal circumstances. I had not driven for years, including not during the pandemic until that point, so I was not aware that I could end a ride, consequence-free, for people not wearing a mask. I could also just deny the ride before it started for no mask. These smokers did not have masks (as they were smoking), so I could have just drove on.

I actually tried to deny the 2nd smoker after barely being able to breathe from the first smoker. I did not want another one in my car; I just wanted to cancel the ride for being a smoker, and take a ding on my status. I drove past him, down the block and parked so I could cancel the trip on my phone. There was no one else around; it was a run-down looking apartment parking lot. The guy took it as that he was getting picked up still, and walked down the street and jumped into the car when I was trying to find the hidden cancel function in the Uber app (dude, why is it so difficult to find?). My car unlocks the doors automatically upon shifting into park. Amazingly, everyone on this planet has trouble opening a Tesla door, except this one smoker guy, so yeah, he hopped right in.

Seat Belt Issues Begin

I was again on the poor side of town, and where you are dictates your next assignment, so as I got deeper, it did not get much better. The next pick-up was me, in my Model 3, picking up a family from a Goodwill. I actually do shop at Goodwill sometimes, not to say it is terrible, but it does attract a certain type of people. Anyways, even though the scenario looked odd, I was not going to cancel them for being poor. I actually should have canceled them for their behaviour, but I was rusty on the cancellation rules.

I helped load all their wares into the trunk myself, because I did not want it to get scratched. They also had a baby stroller, which I just barely fit into the car. I had to push down the back seat, and one of the passengers had to sit in the front seat. The other passenger stayed in the back. I asked if everyone had a seatbelt on, and I was told “yes.” As soon as the car started moving, the seat belt alarm went on. I told her to put on the seat belt. I figured she would just do it, and kept moving into traffic. Once in traffic she started saying how it was difficult because she had a baby strapped to her chest, but that seemed like more of a reason to wear a seat belt. I then said I would pull over to get her to put on her seat belt, but then she finally got it on (a Christmas miracle!).

After the fact, I learned I could have simply declined her for not having a baby seat. If she did have a baby seat, I actually would not have enough room to install it, and would have just cancelled it. I guess the riders try to slip by with anything they can. In what world would you not have a baby seat? It was just a short drive, but I did it, I guess because I did not want the consequences of cancelling the ride (again, who’s the boss?). Riding a bus would had been a suitable option if she did not have a baby seat.

End of Day One

Anyways, I just wanted to get these 5 rides done for the $250, so I carried on and did them. I was far from home, so I tried using the destination setting to drive back… I figured I minus well get some pay to drive towards home. Again, another move to squeeze drives out of me.

During this time, unrelated to Uber, I was taking a WCAG2.1 Accessibility course. I knew accessibility from the past, but wanted to be updated. One of the parts of that is to not design websites/apps to be panic inducing, more on that later.

Well, the deed was done, and I was home. But now the Uber Driver app was still installed on my phone. It sends push messages to drive, and when you open the app, it has a heat map to try to convince drivers to hit the road. With as little as a $1 surge bonus, the map turns into a yellow colour. Sometimes, the map goes yellow, without actually assigning a surge price to it. You’ll also find there is a zig-zaggy upwards arrow that shows you where supposedly fares are frequent, but no bonus. It only really behooves Uber for a driver to leave their area to one of these spots, as there is no surge price there; it is probably not even worth the gas to get to that spot.

At $1.75 surge pricing, the colour starts to shift to red. It would probably make more sense for $10 to be red, because all amounts over $1.75 are red, kind of leaving the colour coding as useless to understand where the best money is at a glance. 

From a manipulation tactic, this works well for Uber. It does create a sense or urgency. Red does come across as an intense and panic-inducing colour. Remember, you are supposed to be your own boss, but the boss, (Uber) is just pulling low-visible puppet strings. I still wanted more money, so I went out for the surge. Even as I was out there, I felt like it was not worth it, but I kept going for the idea that I “could” get a good surge fare. I did this for maybe four more drive days (mostly weekend days at this point). 

Looking back at the time, the only day that seemed worth driving was the first one, which included that initial bait-bonus.

One of the surprising burdens of driving was getting people to wear a seat belt. Most of the drives, I have to sit and wait for people to put on a seat belt, after telling them to do so. People even lied when I asked if they wore a seat belt, so I learned to not drive away from the pick-up point until I saw the seatbelt on and heard a click. If I did miss a person, or they took off their seat belt, the car would squeal on them once the car was in motion. They seem to think because they are in the back-seat, that they are immune to getting flung in a car accident; physics does not change for Uber drives VS personal drives. Some people even described that they felt the seat belt was strangling them! Huh?

Day Two – Thursday

I went to drive the next day, to evaluate how much I could make on a normal day. That evening, I started to feel kind of sick, and at the end of the night, I knew I was sick. One of the no-maskers from the previous night got me sick. I don’t leave my house much, as I work remote, so it clearly was one of the riders. What made things worse was I was too sick to work full days at my hourly remote part time job. The hourly part time job pays more than Uber. So, I made less money that week, because I was sick from my day job. Working for Uber actually resulted in less pay from my part-time job. Now I was in a real hole, as I had to make up for the lost designer wages, with low wage Uber rides in the next few days.

Saturday

My COVID test was negative, so I went online when my temperature was back to normal. I decided to really enforce masks, as that was the Uber policy anyways (and the US pandemic regulation). I wore a mask, but the passengers had to too this time. I would not unlock the door until they put it on. I did get one 1-star (bad) review for this, but I couldn’t afford to get sick again. My insurance sucks, plus no sick pay, plus I did not want COVID. I did cancel and drive away from no-maskers. They wanted me to make an exception for them, but it was not worth the risk. With just 8 drives that first night, with not everyone wearing a mask, I got sick, so the odds for staying healthy are not that good for a ride-share driver.

As an added “bonus” the ride who one-starred me: I offered to cancel on him so he could try this luck finding another driver that did not care about masks. He said no to that offer, as I was already there and he did not want to wait. He begrudgingly put on the mask, got into the car, and as I drove off, he opened a Monster and took off his mask to drink. Seriously, the drive was not going to take that long, and I felt he was trying to make a reason to not wear a mask for 5 minutes. Upon seeing him without a mask, I told him I was going to pull over and cancel the ride, but then he put his mask back on. Man, this is a transit, a means of travel, not a restaurant to be drinking in my car.

Sunday

The next day I was getting bad trips. One had me stuck at a train track crossing for 15 or 20 minutes to pick up a guy who did not have a mask, so I had to decline the trip. I had actually bailed at the train tracks after some minutes, but before I could find that darn “cancel” button on my phone, the driver called after about my status; at that point I felt guilty about this guy needing a ride and went back into the car line to cross the tracks.

Because that train track trip was on the edge of town, I got some weird outskirt trips by proximity that were short and not worth the drive to them. I got a trip to drive someone out of town since I was already on the outskirts of town. I had to drive back in to town non-paid. I was now running low on battery from wasting time driving back into town, so I had to stop Ubering and drive home. I had about 17 miles of charge left when I got home. I actually tried to super charge on the way home, but the station was full. I did not want to spend more energy waiting for a charger, so I took the drive straight home.

Week 2

I still wanted money, trying to make up for the non-paid sick days, so I tried driving again. Again, tempted by the surge map that never really helped. I would see I am in an area with $10 or $12 dollar surge pricing, but I kept getting assigned to $1 or $3 dollar surge drives, or no surge at all. It really made me laugh when I went online for in-town surge pricing, but then get some whacked out trip outside of the city. I kept thinking I would get juicy surge pricing, but then bait-and-switched to out of town trips.

There was a quest in my email to do one trip near a golf course, and get a $10 bonus, but when I opened the app, it only was paying out $5. I was really starting to feel like a puppet, being led around town for the $1 or $3 dollar surge prices, that had like a $4 fare, and I really did not want to drive across town for a $5 quest bonus. Who knows if I would even hail a ride from the specific golf course parking lot? How long would I have to wait? No, thanks.

Friday

What made Friday night worse, was I knew I had a finite battery charge. I was tired, my battery was getting lower, so I set my trip destination to Home. I had been ending my driving sessions when I was both tired and low on car battery, and it seemed to be working out well. I knew I had enough battery to get home, and some wiggle room for en-route trips. It was getting later, and if I stayed out later I would risk drunkos too, so it was a good reason to call it a night; I don’t mind driving people TO a bar, but not FROM a bar.

I don’t see the pick-up or destination until the trip starts; if it does show (I don’t think it does), it must be so fast that I can’t see it on the screen while also trying to drive. At best, I see the ride fare amount and have seconds to accept; if you don’t click fast enough, it counts as a decline and counts against your account and any quests quotas are reset. I clicked to accept.

So naturally, Uber gave me a trip request that took me out of town immediately. I was not happy about this, but some of the destination trips ended up having a far out pick-up, but the end point was along my route; I thought this would be the same. I drove north of my home city, to another city to pick this person up. Once I picked her up, the destination was revealed to be back into town… downtown core. I was trying to go HOME, not downtown. Downtown was no way near where I was or where I was headed when I put on destination mode. I was trying to do the math in my head as the rider was putting on her seatbelt, to figure if I had enough energy to get her downtown, and then to a charging station; I knew I could not go home for my free solar panel charging.

As I drove towards town, I figured I only would have seven miles of battery left if I dropped off this woman downtown. I would not have enough to make it to a charging station after. I really did not want to go down to seven miles of charge at all as that is an estimate of energy; it could be wrong. There could be traffic. There could be a train blocking the road. Anything could suck up that energy. I was being pushed to my limit and hit it. I did not want to risk running out of battery to get this stranger downtown. I felt bad, but I opened up my mouth and explained to the woman my situation:

I was planning on driving home, which I had enough battery for, and had some battery for destination trips on the way home. I did not have enough battery to drive out of town to another city, and back to downtown. I didn’t live near downtown, I lived on the outskirts of town.

The woman asked if there was enough battery to at least drop her off. I said yes, but there would not be anything left for me and I was unwilling to do that. With that, I had to pull over to an en route charger. I recommended she call another Uber, so she did not wait for me to charge. It actually  just took 5 minutes of super charging to get enough battery to complete the trip and trip home, but I had ended the Uber trip, as she did not want to be billed to wait at the charging station (fare enough). I told her I could take her to the rest of her destination fare-free, because it would be messed up to leave her stranded. I really did not like the idea of paying for charge, and giving the lady a free ride, as I am a person, not like the rich Uber corp, but I offered it to not be leaving her in a pinch.

She already had another Uber coming. It was about 15 minutes out at this point. I guess there were not many drivers out, and that is why her pick-up time at such a prime part of the city was slow, and why I got the bizarre out of town trip, rather than a trip towards my house.  I let her wait in my car for the next  driver to show up. With her gone, I went home, having done thing I did not want to do: pay for electricity. (Actually the cost to get  100+ miles was $8, so it was not all to expensive, but it was the principle of not spending money when I was trying to make money.)

Saturday

Well on Saturday of week two, the quest bonus was now showing as $10 per trip in the app, but I again did not want to drive across town, to “maybe” get a ride. It made more sense to take the real ride requests near me, so I did that. A bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush, and Uber was teaching this to me well. It was seeming like the surges were never worth while, so I ignored this as a sole motiving decision factor to go online. This drive-day was low paying and tiring without any bonuses and surges never materializing even though I did see them on the map. Sometimes I think I would qualify for a quest bonus (ex: do 3 rides and get a $5 bonus), but the app would glitch out, messing with my consecutive streak. I even had to cancel a ride for a penalty, for a woman who wanted to fit five people into my car, which could only take four guests in best case scenarios, during the pandemic, Uber limits the passengers to three, I told her I could not break the law with or without Uber, but she asked again, just to be sure.

I had to cancel the last rider, as she was drunk and without a mask. It took awhile for her to get to the car, just to find she had no mask. The Uber app makes riders verify by clicking a button to say they have a mask before they call a ride; I learned that from the lady I had to bail on the night before. For some reason when I canceled this lady, I could no longer chose “no mask” as a reason, and I took the penalty to my account. It seemed worth it, as I did not want a drunko, and I certainly did not want to get sick again. Uber said they were sending me masks, but I have not seen them yet. Plus, who doesn’t own a mask by now?

It was getting close to 9pm, and if I was already getting drunkos, it made sense to call it a night. Fiesta was going on, and so many of the trips were downtown, with the gridlock traffic, and closed street lanes. I went offline, not wanting to get anymore of that.

It is funny, how when I started driving, I made sure to 100% not have a chance of getting a drunk rider by driving during sunlight hours, but only six drive sessions in, I was driving later into the night, in an attempt to try to make some money, but also getting riskier to the drunk crowd.

Bogus Surge Pricing – The Final Straw

Probably the most evident case for the surge pricing being bogus was experienced now.

As I drove home away from the Fiesta drunko, I saw I was in an area with a +$21 surge pricing. I went online. (Actually, you can’t see if the surge is still going on when you are online with Uber. It seems like another manipulation to hide the truth, as the whether it is worth the driver to be online.)

Immediately, I was given a pick-up on the other side of town, with a $3 surge bonus. I should have rightly gotten a $21 surge because I was in that area. I was mad at myself for falling for it, went offline, but proceeded to pick the rider up since I was already committed to it.

When I got to the rider, she said she was waiting 38 minutes for a pick-up and was about to give up and stay home. I guess that is why Uber shot me out there to another far off part of town, but that is not why I went online (to be altruistic). I went online for that +$21 surge, but got a whopping $3 surge.

Sunday

One of the funny things is as I was at home driving, I would see things like +$10, =$20 surges and want to drive, but knowing I would work the next morning, I stayed in. I “felt” like I was missing out on cash because of the design. It was astonishing how agonizing it was to be “missing out” on money.

App Issues/ Design Features

The app, I suppose by design, glitches out a lot.

• Sometimes fare request would literally just flash on the phone, faster than I could move my hand. Sometimes, the app would say, “trip declined,” without ever seeing a ride request in the first place.
• Sometimes the app would straight-up say, “Network Connection Error.” I have AT&T, which is primo service.

Apps are easy enough to design and test, I figure this is an attempt to not pay out the consecutive bonuses. Yes, you can message them after a night of driving, but that is another thing to remember, so they probably count on you not doing it; even if 50% of people forget to do it, they win and save money.

The app also makes getting help very difficult. You have to dig through a bunch of screens, some screens are dead ends, and only a few lead to a “Send a Message,” or “chat” feature. You can’t simply and directly click on a “send a message button from a top level menu. They really don’t want you to contact them. You’d think they would be making it easy for drivers to fix issues, to keep the drivers happy, and driving more. Putting a “send a message” button on the top level of the app would be much more authentically helpful. This UI is certainly by design to have a “college try” of contact methods, but not too accessible contact methods.

One final grip, I wanted to download the PDF earning statement as I did years ago for my bookkeeping, so I logged into the Uber website. I can’t get past the screen to submit car insurance for an old car. I still own the car, but I haven’t driven it in years; I still do have it insured for some reason, so I submitted the insurance to a car I will never drive for Uber again. I ended up just taking screenshots off my phone as a quick-fix; I don’t want to spend all day bookkeeping and this was already taking longer than it should. It is crazy how un-useable they make the website when they are desperate for drivers. (Also, Uber would not take my business automotive insurance, and required I submit my personal car insurance, which is weird because I am paid as a contractor to my design business. Shouldn’t I use my business insurance?)

Conclusion

• Getting adults to wear seatbelts is a real chore. You might have to kick someone out, or pull over mid-drive, or risk getting a ticket for them not wearing a seat belt. In Texas, the driver is the one who is ticketed, so it is not a risk financial I want to take, let alone a bodily risk.
• Driving for Uber is a lot of work. You get tired, and actually work less at your day job, if you have one because you burn your energy on that.
• Oddly enough, I think I loss a few pounds driving for Uber. I think this is because there is no chance to eat when you are in a driving session. You lose consecutive bonuses for going offline, plus buying food on the road costs money, and driving home to get food is impractical if your assignments took you to another part of the county.
• Getting sick while driving for Uber means you make less money, than having not driven for them at all if you miss working at your day job.
• The surge map is completely bogus. It may look red hot with +$21 or +$36 bonus fares, but I have not seen any. Heck, I don’t even think any of the $5 surge fares are real.
• Uber really manipulates their trip assignments to push you to your limits. They need you to stay online, especially when there aren’t many drivers out there. You think you are the boss, but you are not. They give you assignments.
  • You can’t even put rules or filters on the assignments to screen out smokers, or people with food. It would make more sense, and make drivers and riders happier to match with people who will allow smoking or eating in their car.
• I did the math after 2 weeks of driving. I did make money on that first night, with the bait-bonus, but the other nights were not good. When you deduct the value of mileage wear-and-tear of your take-home earnings, you have about 60% left for you, but then you have to also reduce your ride share insurance, and gas/electricity. So at the end of the day, is it really worth driving, risking people messing up the car, risking getting COVID? My answer is NO. Consider also that I have an electric car; if you had to pay for gas, you would make less. It would be like just spinning your wheels (best analogy, not intended pun).

I am going to wash my car this weekend, detail clean it, and not drive again for Uber (I hope). That heat map is proving to be real addictive to look at, to dream of the potential, but I have to remember to look at the evidence, not the “possibilities.” I feel like the heat map is as addictive as Reddit can be (which I try to abstain from). I kind of feel like I devalued my car with mileage added and scuffs added by riders, more than I made cash. I hope I don’t go for the quick-fix of cash and can get some paying clients on-board. I’d rather make money off my training, skills, and talent. Many people can drive, but only some can design. It seems like an easy slope to get into a slave-labour scenario.

UPDATE July 2022 – I have not driven for Uber since. The though crossed my mind, but this article and it’s remembrance of the illusionary pay-outs helped me. Each time I said “no” in my head, it got easier to forget about this non-sense.