Behind the Wheel 2: Notes from an Uber/Lyft - The New Zine

From the trenches of San Francisco’s sharing economy: another rideshare confessional zine

Behind the Wheel 2 includes more insight into the day-to-day travails of a rideshare driver in San Francisco, more stories about driving drunks, switching from Lyft to Uber, a visit to Uber HQ, self-entitled douchebags, talk of gentrification and displacement, the tech boom, public debauchery, emotional breakdowns, police activity and my first puker.

56 pages
Wraparound cover
Illustrated with street scenes from the passenger seat
Staple bound

$5.00 postpaid

the print version is available through etsy

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The Kindle version:

To Uber Or Not To Uber

(An Excerpt from Piltdownlad #10.5 – Behind the Wheel 2: Notes from an Uber/Lyft.)

I started seeing the ads on Facebook around the first of May:

Drive away with $500 — Exclusively for Lyft Drivers

Drive for Lyft? Make $500 for trying UberX — All it takes is one trip.

Sign up today!

There was even a pink mustache in the ads. So I knew they were legit. I didn’t click right away though. There’s nothing easy about easy money. But the ads keep popping up in my feed two or three times a day. Out of curiosity, I click the link. I’m redirected to the UberX sign-up page. I check to see if my car qualifies. I’ve always assumed Uber is more selective than Lyft about what models and years qualify for their rideshare service UberX. Before I signed up for Lyft, I’d checked out Uber’s site. I remember seeing something about them only taking Priuses. Either I was mistaken or things have changed, because my Jetta totally qualifies.

Still, I don’t sign up. The offer is valid through May 31. Since I’m going to LA for my mother-in-law’s birthday in the middle of the month, I figure I have enough time before the deal ends. Besides, with how many ads are popping up on my feed, they seem desperate for drivers.

I’ve always been curious about driving for Uber. Mainly because I hate Lyft’s pink fluffy mustache. Even though I never attached the thing to the grill of my car or placed it on my dashboard like so many drivers, where it looks like what you’d find on the floor after a fluffy convention, I generally feel it would be helpful to have something on my car to indicate that I work for a rideshare. Especially when trying to find passengers on crowded streets at night. Uber drivers use a subtle neon blue “U” that illuminates elegantly from their windshields. They look classy as fuck. I wouldn’t mind putting that symbol on my car.

I’ve also heard they make more money. One night, while waiting in the alley outside the Box in SoMa, I chatted with an UberX driver. He told me he used to drive for Lyft but switched to Uber. Now he’s been making almost twice as much money. “I get so many requests,” he said, “I had to go offline in the Mission to get here before they close.”

Since Lyft lowered their rates thirty percent in April, I haven’t been making as much money as when I started in March. Flush with 250 million dollars in venture capital, Lyft is trying to compete with Uber for a larger cut of the rideshare market. To offset the price cut, they waived the twenty percent commission. At first, demand increased and Prime Time surge pricing made up the difference. But that didn’t last long. Since then, the price cuts are having a serious impact on my bottom line. I figure I’m making $200 less a week, driving the same hours. I try to work more to make up the difference, but I can only go so long before exhaustion sets in and I no longer feel safe behind the wheel.

Around the first of the month, when rent is due, things are especially hard. At one point, before the price wars, I stopped getting emails from my credit card company warning me that I was approaching my credit limit. These days, I receive those messages daily. There are weeks when I can’t afford to buy gas until I got my weekly deposit from Lyft on Wednesdays. I go through about $35 of gas during a normal six-hour shift. On Friday and Saturday nights, I used to make around $200 to $250 dollars. Now it’s about $150. If there’s an event going on, I can hit $200. Weeknights, I make around $100. Tops. Since I spend about the same on gas, I stopped driving during the week to focus on the weekends instead, when there’s generally more demand and surge pricing.

As appealing as Uber sounds, I still have reservations about signing up. Based on numerous articles I’ve read, Uber seems like an unscrupulous company, along the lines of Wal-Mart or Amazon. And Travis Kalanick, the CEO, comes across as an antisocial, libertarian scumbag who’d stab his own mother in the back to get ahead. He probably has a cum-stained paperback of The Fountainhead under his pillow that he strokes gently as he falls asleep at night. The name of the company itself, Uber, implies more about the megalomania of Kalanick than the service they provide. And this whole campaign to recruit Lyft drivers is beyond unethical. Participating in it feels wrong. I keep asking myself, Do I really want to associate myself with a company run by a guy who longs for the days of driverless cars so he can get rid of the “middle man,” i.e., drivers?

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Ten Consequences of Driving for Uber and Lyft

After nine months of driving mostly fulltime for Lyft and Uber, these are the ten things that make me dread ridesharing:

1. Vehicle Depreciation

Besides passengers slamming my doors, which has caused a mysterious rattle, scuffing my interior, leaving behind trash and generally making the kinds of messes you’d expect from a two year old, there is also mechanical wear and tear. The more I drive, the more things go wrong with my car. I figure I have about two more months until I need new brakes and tires. And then my rideshare days are over. I just don’t make enough from driving for Uber and Lyft to afford to keep driving for Uber and Lyft.

2. Boot Malfunction

My right boot is more worn than the left. To be fair, this may have more to do with my bony heels, but it’s not something I ever noticed until I had to keep my foot on the gas and brake pedals for hours at a time.

3. Physical Discomfort

My neck is like an open wound. No doubt from glancing over my shoulder as I switch lanes in traffic all night long, always diligent to keep an eye on my blind spots, as well as the other cars on the road, speeding bicyclists, impatient cabbies and cavalier pedestrians. As a result, the muscles that run along my jaw are steel rods. I have very little radius when I turn my head left or right. The tension never goes away. There is a real possibility that I may have some dislocated vertebrae. My joints hurt. My right ankle has a creak in it. And I have a chronic case of hemorrhoids. No matter how much ointment I apply, they remain perpetually enflamed. I noticed once, when I was a Lyft passenger, that my driver had a hemorrhoid pillow on his seat. I may need to acquire one of those in the near future…

4. Spousal Neglect

Since I’m out late driving on the weekends, the Wife’s home alone. And she’s not happy about it. I’ve tried driving during the weekdays, but the gridlocked traffic makes getting anywhere in the city a chore. It’s not worth the frustration. I spend more time driving to the pinned locations than I do taking passengers where they need to go. And the only time you can get surge pricing is on weekend nights. And holidays. Or special events. So…

5. Fear of Deactivation

Nobody enjoys being judged. But constantly feeling threatened with “deactivation” is downright humiliating. The rating system employed by Lyft and Uber focuses on only one aspect of a driver’s performance: passenger satisfaction. And it’s not easy making people happy. Even when the ride has gone perfectly, there’s never a guarantee the passenger is satisfied. All it takes is one drunk passenger on a power trip and you’re deactivated.

6. Erratic Sleep

I work late and come home late. But I can’t sleep late because my head is filled with dreams about my Lyft summary, which is the only way to find out what I made the day before and what’s happened to my rating. Sometimes the summary is in my inbox before I wake up. Other days the email doesn’t arrive until the afternoon. With Uber you know, for the most part, what you’ve made at the end of each ride. And your rating is updated in the app as feedback is left. So at least you’re disappointed in real time.

7. Misanthropic Tendencies

After a while, you really start to hate people. I’ve met some really great folks in my car, but I’ve also encountered a lot of stinkers. People that I’d rather see under my front tire than in my front seat. But I have to maintain a sunny disposition and be accommodating to my passengers or risk a negative rating. Not an easy task when some passengers are just straight up assholes. They input the wrong location. They make you wait. They ignore you. They talk down to you. They say racist and sexist things in your car. Your only retaliation is to rate THEM low. Which doesn’t amount to much since it’s unlikely Uber or Lyft would ever deactivate a passenger’s account. I guess we should just be grateful our passengers act like self-entitled douchebags rather than punching us or holding guns to our heads.

8. Paranoia

Every time I go out to drive, I say a prayer that nothing bad happens. I can’t shake the nagging sensation that if something goes wrong, I’ll be fucked. Uber and Lyft tells us to use our personal insurance in the event of an accident. But our insurance won’t cover any damages since we’re engaged in commercial activity. So what’s the point of having personal insurance to do rideshare? Not that things would be better with the insurance companies Uber and Lyft use. I’ve read numerous reports from drivers who’ve been in accidents and had to crowd source funds to get their cars fixed. Or just being left in the lurch. We are hardly protected under normal circumstances, but what if we’re at fault? Oh, the horror… And with Uber, there’s no support number. We can only email them afterwards. On top of all that, both Uber and Lyft charge us a deductible. So if we are covered, we still pay out of pocket, even if we aren’t at fault.

9. Monetary Deficiencies

Because of the price wars, as Uber and Lyft fight it out to determine who will be the preeminent rideshare platform, drivers are getting squeezed more and more. The rates just keep going down. As it is, I’m broke as hell. My credit cards are all maxed out, most of the time my bank account is overdrawn and I have a painful toothache I can’t afford to fix. Not to mention taxes… I don’t want to even think about what I’m going to do when it’s time to pay taxes.

10. Self-loathing

If you’ve made it this far on my list of rideshare consequences, you might be wondering why I don’t just quit. I know it’s stupid to complain about something you can’t control. And I know it’s my own damn fault. I bought into the promise of ridesharing as an alternative source of income with a good amount of freedom and it turned out to be a lie. I fell for the classic switcheroo. I’m an idiot. So why don’t I just get on with my life? Well, that day is coming. Without a doubt. For now, the hell I know is better than the one I don’t. And I like driving. I like meeting people. I like exploring the streets of San Francisco. But there’s no future in ridesharing for drivers. Hell, the way things are going, there won’t be a future for cabbies either.

Uber is Walking for Lazy People: On The Five-Dollar Ride

The Six-Dollar Five-Dollar Ride

For an Uber driver, few things are worse than the five-dollar ride. Pukers definitely take the top spot, but they are nowhere near as common as the dreaded short rides.

In San Francisco, Uber charges a base fare of $2.20, twenty-six cents a minute and a buck-thirty each mile. (When I first drafted this post a week ago, the rate was three dollars base, thirty cents each minute and a $1.50 a mile—that’s how quickly the rates are going down). The minimum fare is five dollars (previously six dollars). So anything under a mile is a five-dollar ride.

Of course, we only see 80 percent of that five-dollar fare. And it’s not like we get any tips to make up for the short ride. (Though maybe one day that will change.)

Five-dollar rides are hardly worth the effort. When you factor in gas, the time and effort spent driving to the passenger’s location, waiting for them to saunter outside, get into the car, give you directions and then drive them to their destination, that minimum fare ends up costing the driver more than the passenger.

People who take short rides know they are wasting our time. They often apologize when they get in the car.

“I’m only going a few blocks. Sorry.”

Technology is all about creating convenience. It makes us lazy. Uber is capitalizing on this culture of laziness by making rides so cheap. Why walk a few blocks when you can take an Uber for five bucks? Forget driver-less cars. Uber is now competing with the bus. The SF Muni costs $2.25. And unless you live on a bus line, you’ll still have a little walking to do. The horror! For most new San Franciscans, five dollars is a drop in the bucket. In a town where rent for a one-bedroom is over three thousand dollars, that’s pocket change. Most people make decent money. They can afford a few extra dollars. So why the hell not take an Uber?

Of course, passengers don’t think about the consequences these five-dollar rides have on drivers. We do the short rides and keep our mouths shut, giving off the impression that we’re happy to do it. But convenience comes with a price and the person providing the convenience usually pays that price.

Rideshares are great for the companies and users. But the drivers are fucked!

The whole concept of Uber as some sort of “disruptor” is a farce. All Uber has done is become the very system they were trying to replace, except at a cheaper price and at the expense of drivers.

Low Fares Are Not Fair!

As Uber drivers, we are doing the jobs of cabbies. Plain and simple. But we are paid less, we use our own cars, we are judged by an unfair rating system, we take almost all the risks, and we’re even denied a gratuity, one of the cornerstones of the service industry.

I recently read a post on an Uber Facebook group from a disgruntled driver who suggested we call passengers before we pick them up to find out where they’re going. That way we can decide whether to take the ride or cancel it. Since drivers can face deactivation if they reject or cancel too many rides, the poster even implied that he had a trick for getting passengers to cancel themselves, so it wouldn’t affect our ride acceptance rate.

Not a bad idea. We already see the passengers’ ratings, so we can reject rides based on that. Or the pickup location. Having the freedom to choose rides based on final destination would be a godsend!

Uber could easily install a feature that required passengers to input their destination. Right now it’s only voluntary and when passengers do add the address, the driver can’t see the location until the ride has started. Of course, Uber obviously knows that if drivers were able to see where a passenger is going we’d be more likely to cancel the short rides and wait for the longer, more lucrative ones. This activity dismantles the entire rideshare system. The whole point of Uber and Lyft is the ability to request a car and for it to actually show up.

Before rideshares, cabbies were free to pick and chose a ride based on a passenger’s appearance, their level of sobriety and yes, destination. If they didn’t want to drive to a particular area of the city, they just didn’t let you into the cab. That’s the system these rideshare start-ups are trying to disrupt. Now Uber drivers are figuring out how to beat them at their own game by getting back to the way things were before. Because maybe, just maybe, that system wasn’t so flawed to begin with.

Cabbies know that most people suck. They have to be particular. Uber drivers are beginning to realize the same thing. But we don’t have that luxury.

A passenger once asked me, when I was complaining about short rides, whether rideshare users would take cabs if Uber and Lyft weren’t around. Some would, sure, I said, but most people would probably take public transportation. They’d walk. Or they’d ride a bike.

I pointed out the example of surge pricing. When the prices are low, passengers are happy to request an Uber without a second thought. And the ride requests come in one after another. But anytime the prices are surging, the requests slow down to a trickle. Suddenly taking a stroll through the beautiful streets of San Francisco doesn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.

screenshot of Uber phone in driver mode during surge pricing... I drove through all that red for half an hour and never got a single request

It's time to face facts, by continuing to lower their fares, Uber is perpetuating a culture of laziness. And they are benefiting from it with a seventeen billion dollar valuation. Uber is the darling of Silicon Valley. But drivers are paying an even greater price. So... what’s the going rate for self-worth these days?

Ten Reasons Why Your Uber Driver Hates You

Ten Reasons... a Buzzfeed listicle.

Ten Annoying Questions I Get Asked as a Lyft Driver - The Listicle

I made a listicle on Buzzfeed from an old blog post: the ten most annoying questions I get asked as Lyft driver in San Francisco.

I'm so 21st Century.

Outside Lands & The Rideshare Feeding Frenzy

Before the Outside Lands festival was even over, numerous articles started popping up on sites like ValleyWag, SF Weekly and SFist about ridiculously high fares due to Uber’s surge pricing. Each night after the event let out surge pricing got up to 5 times the normal rate. Online, everybody freaked out over a couple pics of some pretty high fares. Uber was portrayed as the bad guy, ripping off decent festivalgoers that just wanted to get home.

Yeah, it’s easy to hate on Uber. And plenty of commenters lambasted the spoiled passengers who couldn’t be bothered to take public transportation. Or walk. Or ride a bike. Though if they’d seen the mobs around the bus stops on Geary, they might have held back on some of that criticism. Those poor saps weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Still, is it better to be a sucker? No. But another factor that’s being overlooked in all this brouhaha is that these high fares were not just the direct result of surge pricing. They are also a consequence of drivers coming into the city to work event and not knowing how to navigate the streets.

A Lyft Playlist

I have an iPod jack built into the center console of my Jetta. A perk that came with the California Edition. I’m able to control it through the stereo. Sort of. I can’t switch between playlists, select songs or anything sophisticated (that I know of), but I don’t have to worry about cords or accidentally leaving it in plain view when the kids who smash windows come patrolling the cars in my neighborhood.

Most of the time, I keep the volume down. I’m never sure what passengers will think of my choice in music, which leans heavily on punk and post-punk. I try to play songs people will like, but I listen to mostly obscure bands. Yeah, I know, like all record collectors, I’m a pretentious asshole.

Top Ten Questions I Get Asked as a Lyft Driver

UPDATE: I turned this post into a listicle on Buzzfeed.

1. How long have you been driving for Lyft?

2. Do you like driving for Lyft?

3. Is this your full time job?

4. Where are you from?

5. Do you live in the city?

6. What’s Oakland like?

7. What’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened while driving for Lyft?

8. Has anybody ever thrown up in your car?

9. What song is this?

10. Where’s your mustache?

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Drive for Lyft & Be More than a Number in 8 Easy Steps

The Onboarding Process

Lyft prides itself on creating a community between drivers and passengers. In the rideshare war, Lyft is the conscientious, friendly contender, while its main competitor, Uber, doesn’t seem to give two shits about who ferries their paying customers around town. It’s almost impossible to separate Uber and its founder, Travis Kalanick. In promotional videos and interviews with media, Kalanick comes across as an anti-social, libertarian scumbag who’d stab his own mother in the back to get ahead. Even the name, Uber, implies Kalanick’s ambitions, not a rideshare company.

During Lyft’s latest recruiting blitz, they emphasized this distinction by hanging banners outside the Uber offices in Potrero Hill, employing a sign twirler on the corner and a billboard truck circling the block, all declaring in bold type the mantra, “Be More Than A Number.” 

Everybody wants to feel appreciated. But what’s so special about driving for Lyft? Well, if you’re over twenty-one, own a car that’s less than fourteen years old and have a clean record, there are only a few simple steps standing between you and a promising career in ridesharing.

Lyft's Pacific Driver Lounge is my Honey Boo Boo

A few days ago, I published an excerpt from Behind the Wheel: A Lyft Driver's Log about Lyft's private Facebook group the Pacific Driver Lounge on my Medium page. As I was going to sleep that night, I posted a link on the public Facebook group Uber, SideCar, Lyft Drivers Community. Somebody then reposted it on the Lounge. This is what I woke up to: