Driving - Part 1
People had been telling me to do it for a while, it was a way of making extra money. And we all certainly need money in this day and age, quite honestly ANYTHING to make a buck. I was a bit wary about it, but then realize it was really nothing. We all were wary with the advent of the Internet and the prospect of meeting people whose last name you don't even know for business or personal reasons. Like everything else with changes, we get past them and we adapt to these changes and it becomes commonplace. We seem to escalate in terms of these changes, when at first meeting someone for said business or personal reasons in public places to that of bringing them into our homes. The next step is to provide something for others that we wouldn't otherwise. This is a range of things, sordid and not so sordid. Still, there will always be the feeling of caution, a natural reaction, feeling unsure about what is or isn't about to happen. It was with this feeling, plus my financial situation, that I decided to start driving for Uber.
Uber Technologies is a company that originated in San Francisco that develops and markets a map driving app. This has become a private driving service which has taken away from the traditional taxi or limo service which we have traditionally used. Is it better than a taxi? Questionable I suppose. I was more of the thinking that this was more like a limo service, as it first started off as, with a long black sedan, vacuumed clean with a complementary beverage or mints being served to those in the backseat. My car has always been kind of a traditional woman's car, a bit of a garbage dump at times with bottles and cans rolling around the floor, the occasional random bit of laundry or miscellaneous clothing item in the backseat, and a few oddities here and there (a martial arts weapon in its case, a box of books, etc.). So I made sure to clean it out and make my car presentable, especially when carrying people you don't know in it just from here to there.
I decided my first Uber driving experience would be on a Saturday afternoon. Saturdays are the days when people are most likely to go out, and go out they did. I live in the suburbs where a majority of suburban people who go out on Saturday nights will go to bars also located in the suburbs, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to take someone from point A to point B. Once I signed onto the app saying I was available, the first person I picked up was just two streets over from me, a single guy, who I took at a chain restaurant / bar in a nearby suburb. I told him when I picked him up that he was my very first Uber ride. I don't know how impressed he was or wasn't with it. The next rides were from the suburbs into the city, or from the city back to the suburbs. I kept my role with them as minimal as possible, not wanting this to be like Taxi Driver Confessions (a popular show on HBO in the mid to late 80s, long before but perhaps the precursor to reality TV where a hidden camera was mounted in a taxi cab and people told things to the driver in their jaunt from here to there). I decided not to do the usual taxi time of late Saturday night, when the clubs were closing and people were well inebriated thanks to a night of drinking. Plus I seem to have lost my car charger for my phone and should I have chosen, I would have had to have stopped for a bit and let the phone charge.
There were no oddities to report on my first outing. I gave eight rides on this night, as I reported earlier it was mostly taking people to and from bars, home from a bar, or from home to a bar. They were suburbanites. Riders were either a single person, a small group, or couples. The couples were off to a private party and brought a gift or bottle of wine with them. I was also kind of surprised to see the individual people carrying a six pack of beer with them, either they were bringing it to drink at the bar itself or they were going to purchase bottles at the bar and bring them with between locations. I kept my role minimum, in that I did not make much conversation with others, but once they actually left me I said "Be safe." Because we should all be safe.
Uber Technologies is a company that originated in San Francisco that develops and markets a map driving app. This has become a private driving service which has taken away from the traditional taxi or limo service which we have traditionally used. Is it better than a taxi? Questionable I suppose. I was more of the thinking that this was more like a limo service, as it first started off as, with a long black sedan, vacuumed clean with a complementary beverage or mints being served to those in the backseat. My car has always been kind of a traditional woman's car, a bit of a garbage dump at times with bottles and cans rolling around the floor, the occasional random bit of laundry or miscellaneous clothing item in the backseat, and a few oddities here and there (a martial arts weapon in its case, a box of books, etc.). So I made sure to clean it out and make my car presentable, especially when carrying people you don't know in it just from here to there.
I decided my first Uber driving experience would be on a Saturday afternoon. Saturdays are the days when people are most likely to go out, and go out they did. I live in the suburbs where a majority of suburban people who go out on Saturday nights will go to bars also located in the suburbs, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to take someone from point A to point B. Once I signed onto the app saying I was available, the first person I picked up was just two streets over from me, a single guy, who I took at a chain restaurant / bar in a nearby suburb. I told him when I picked him up that he was my very first Uber ride. I don't know how impressed he was or wasn't with it. The next rides were from the suburbs into the city, or from the city back to the suburbs. I kept my role with them as minimal as possible, not wanting this to be like Taxi Driver Confessions (a popular show on HBO in the mid to late 80s, long before but perhaps the precursor to reality TV where a hidden camera was mounted in a taxi cab and people told things to the driver in their jaunt from here to there). I decided not to do the usual taxi time of late Saturday night, when the clubs were closing and people were well inebriated thanks to a night of drinking. Plus I seem to have lost my car charger for my phone and should I have chosen, I would have had to have stopped for a bit and let the phone charge.
There were no oddities to report on my first outing. I gave eight rides on this night, as I reported earlier it was mostly taking people to and from bars, home from a bar, or from home to a bar. They were suburbanites. Riders were either a single person, a small group, or couples. The couples were off to a private party and brought a gift or bottle of wine with them. I was also kind of surprised to see the individual people carrying a six pack of beer with them, either they were bringing it to drink at the bar itself or they were going to purchase bottles at the bar and bring them with between locations. I kept my role minimum, in that I did not make much conversation with others, but once they actually left me I said "Be safe." Because we should all be safe.
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