Forgive me if I’m on a bit of a grievance kick lately. It’s a healthy part of life, and I’ve been repressing it, and now it’s coming out in force. I’m at a constant level of at least some anger these days, and you know what you’re clicking the posts, so I don’t need to justify this.
My Uber Eats driver tried to screw me over on Sunday.
He didn’t actually try to screw me over. Or rather, that wasn’t the primary intent. He was just trying to make an extra buck, or such is my impression. There’s also the small chance Uber was in the wrong, but that feels unlikely, and regardless, the man lied to me. The story:
We were in a hurry to sit down to watch the Super Bowl. Not because we particularly cared about the Super Bowl, but because when your life’s in a state of mild to moderate chaos (not high chaos, mind you, we are just fine overall), achieving social normalcy brings substantial relief. It’s like New Year’s Eve. Take one year off, you won’t actually care, but you want to choose that intentionally—you don’t want to be forced into it.
I left for the grocery store at 4:30 (we’re in Texas, kickoff was scheduled for 5:30), bringing Fargo with me since the pet store next door allows you to tie your dog up inside while you get groceries, which usually translates into Fargo playing with other dogs, playing with people, and generally being the star of a pet store for 25 minutes, which is always her dream. The pet store is a stage, and Fargo is the main event.
The plan was to see if the grocer had any build-your-own pizza ingredients left, and if they didn’t, to order from Spartan, an underrecognized pizza spot here on the East Side about a mile from our apartment. Leaving at 4:30, I was already under a bit of duress, and that duress only grew when the employee at the pet store, whom I’d never seen before (could either mean he’s new or he’s management, I don’t care which he made an enemy that day), told me they’d instituted a two-dog tie-up maximum. Had I not been in a hurry, I later realized, this would’ve been fine, I could’ve waited. But I was in a hurry, and with no other good options, I tied Fargo to a post outside, something that miraculously did not cause the extremely-anxious-from-the-move pup to lose her mind barking at me (she did that later, from the car, when I went to return the shopping cart [also, thank goodness I was in a real hurry and not just a minor hurry, because had the hurry been minor I probably would’ve told the guy he was a fucker or a jackass or that I’d spent too much money at that store for them to change the rules without warning {we’ve spent a lot of money at that store}]).
Fastest grocery shopping of my life.
Also, poked my head outside three or four times to make sure Fargo hadn’t been nabbed. It’s nice to live in Austin when it comes to crime. Don’t want to test fate like that again, though. Gotta take care of your chickens. Fargo’s expensive, and sue us, we’ve got someone allergic to dogs in this home.
They didn’t have the pizza stuff, so from the checkout line, I placed a medium-sized order (two and a half pizzas, in effect) from Spartan, which again, I must stress, is only five minutes from our home. Could’ve picked it up ourselves if not for the hurry, and hey, the delivery people are out their working, might as well help them make some cash.
Long story short, the driver took the pizza all the way to West Campus (half an hour out of the way), and when I called him to ask what was going on, he claimed he was four minutes from us and that he had another order.
The four-minutes-away part is what, for me, crosses out the possibility this guy wasn’t scamming. If he’d been doing something not-shady, I don’t think he’d have lied like that. It says on your phone how far away you are at all times. A constant number, the clock against which you are racing, the formula on which these entire industries run.
What was the shady thing he was doing, then? My best guess is he was running two apps at once, doing a Postmates or DoorDash delivery simultaneously with Uber Eats. Which would be fine, except he was a mile away from us with pizzas and he decided to take care of the West Campus order first. If you’re going to scam, you’ve gotta be efficient. (Also, this kind of approach doesn’t help you during peak time, like…the fucking Super Bowl, for example—it only helps if demand is low, and even then you just log out of the app to make sure you aren’t double-booked, or if you’re an ass you cancel the lower-paying order.) Casting further suspicion, the dude’s approval rating was only 93%, which with Uber Eats is a massive red flag. 97%’s understandable in rare cases. But dip south of 95% and your driver is either not equipped to be delivering food or is scamming.
That not-equipped-to-be-delivering-food thing is the thing about Uber Eats, and about rideshare too. It’s really easy. Really, really easy. There are big downsides—you could easily be in a position of danger with few safeguards from Uber and Lyft to help you, each platform’s driver service department is useless, demand and supply are each inconsistent and decently unpredictable, the algorithms aren’t all that optimized and therefore introduce inefficiencies that cost everyone time and money—but at the same time, the act of driving someone from Point A to Point B or delivering their food from Point A to Point B isn’t really that hard. If you know how to read (and I’m not knocking those who don’t, but reading’s a big part of the job) and you know how to drive, you’ll be fine. Most customers are really charitable, too. They give you the benefit of the doubt when you mess up. I probably get more charity than just about anyone—straight, white, usually-clean-shaven-ish male with no visible tattoos—but still…people generally aren’t dicks.
Except for me.
I have become a harsh critic.
Last week, I had to take a Lyft up to pick up my car from having its battery replaced (wouldn’t even jump, first experience calling a tow truck, tow trucks are so cool), and the driver:
- Took an extra fifteen minutes to pick me up because she couldn’t make sense of the in-app navigation.
- Talked my ear off the entire ride about all these terrible problems she was having with Lyft, most of which can be solved by just clicking into settings and poking around, or by reading one of Lyft’s little primers on how things work (these primers suck, but even they would have solved some of her issues).
- Cut across three lanes of traffic to get on the 35-to-183 ramp while I told her, in faster and more frantic tones, to not do it and just take the next exit.
I did it. I gave a one-star review. Don’t put my life in danger. Only I get to do that.
Then, Sunday. The pizza delay. The lying. Thumbs down, of course (welcome to 92% approval, buddy), but I also halved the tip. Should I have taken it away? Probably. But there was that small chance the app had given him another delivery, not told me about it, and somehow made him deliver that delivery first even though it added twenty minutes to his route.
People receiving services from the service industry can often be jackasses. This seems to happen a lot at restaurants. This shouldn’t happen. Servers should be given some grace. But Uber and Lyft drivers…
This isn’t to say we should be assholes when someone misses a turn. If my driver misses a turn, I don’t really care. But if they put me in danger because they were distracted while I paid them to drive me somewhere safely? If they make me wait an extra half-hour for my supper and spend that half-hour trying to figure out if they’re just pulling a scam or if they’re actually stealing it? That’s not cool. And the thing about these jobs is: You generally only make any money if you’re doing good work. If you can’t navigate the whole thing well enough to not cause your passenger danger or not make it obvious you’re scamming your customer, you’re probably spending more on gas and maintenance than you’re bringing in, and you should probably find a different job (and they’re hiring, folks, right now especially). Giving reasonable reviews to unacceptable drivers makes the industry safer, makes the experience better, and opens the market more for those of us doing a good job, but it also is ultimately possibly a good thing for the drivers you’re giving that one star, or that thumbs down. If you aren’t sure, yeah, don’t risk taking away someone’s ability to make an income. But if you know, if you really know, use what the app gives you.
Long way of saying that delivering food and driving rideshare has eliminated a lot of my sympathy for delivery people and rideshare drivers. Also, indirectly seems to have eliminated my compassion for the guy at that pet store. The others at the pet store are fine they understand Fargo’s a joy to have in the shop.
Pizzas were good. Once we reheated them in the oven.
