“Mom, call me when you get there.” The daughter
screams as she sprints down the long driveway.
“What happened?” I ask.
“I was taking on old aquarium out to the trash. The glass
broke. Somehow, it sliced my wrist. Blood was spurting out
all over.”
“That’s not good.” I say. “How long ago?”
“About 20 minutes.”
“Otherwise, how do you feel?” I’m pretending to do triage.
“Dizzy,” she says, “but I always get dizzy at the sight
of blood.”
She smiles through the obvious pain. We’re out on East
Blithedale now.
“What do you do when you’re not slitting your
wrist?” I ask.
Slowly the joke registers and she smiles. A breakthrough.
She starts to relax — and breathe. “I’m a massage therapist and
an assistant to a chiropractor,” she says. “ You’ll have to come in
for a massage. It’s on me. I have a studio in our house.”
“I’ll do that,” I say, deadpanning, “Just one of the many
perks of being an Uber driver.”
What a gig. Thirty minutes ago I was casually watching
a softball game. Now I’m an ambulance driver racing to the
hospital with somebody’s life at stake.
The pickup was on Magnolia in Larkspur at 9 a.m. Friday.
“What do you do?” I ask.
“I own restaurants around the Bay Area,” Sam says from
the backseat.
“I understand Yelp ratings are key for restaurants? How
do you feel about ratings?” I ask.
“We live and die by the ratings, but they’re highly imper-
fect. Some people are chronic complainers,” he says.
“And some people give you low ratings because of something completely unrelated to what you did. I remember
getting a low rating from a woman just because her boyfriend just ditched her. I happened to be the target for her
misdirected anger. How are your restaurants doing on
Yelp?” I ask.
“Some are 4 on Yelp and they’re doing really well. Some
others are 3. 5 and they’re struggling. It makes the system
unfair because there are different standards applied.”
“You’re right about different people applying different
standards,” I say. “On Uber a four rating is a failing grade, yet
on Yelp it’s great. I wonder how many passengers give drivers
a 4 rating and do it using the standards of Yelp.”
“Lots,” he answers, as my GPS announces, “You have
arrived at your destination.”
I rate Sam five stars. I can only hope he reciprocates. m
ABOUT THE AUTHOR John F. Ince is a former
Fortune reporter, author, filmmaker and video producer living in Mill Valley. In the last two years, he’s
given more than 1,000 rides driving part-time for
Uber and Lyft, while working on a book about the
experience. This article has been adapted from that
book, Travels With Vanessa: An Uber and Lyft Driver
Tries to Make Sense of It All.
