Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver: The Late Ones

Episode 36 in a series of true rideshare stories

There’s nobody there when I arrive. I double check that I’m at the right apartment, then put the car in park and begin waiting. A timer on my phone counts down from two minutes—the window that passengers are given to get out to the car.

Actually, they get two free minutes to come out to the car, then they get five minutes for which they are charged a small fee. Mostly, drivers are paid for distance, but we get a few cents a minute for sitting still. After waiting the full seven minutes, I can mark a ride as a no-show and move on without it affecting my scorecard. At that point, I’ll get a couple bucks for the no-show, but after seven minutes of waiting and however long it takes to drive to the pick-up point, I might be out twenty minutes and only get three dollars. It’s frustrating.

The first two minutes goes by, then the five-minute countdown starts. The app is supposed to notify her that I’m here, but just in case, I send her a message telling her I’m outside.

I groan to myself. It’s been a long week already. I haven’t been getting enough sleep, and I’m behind on money for the day. This is also a short ride that won’t pay much anyway. Having to wait six minutes for somebody to come out to the car so I can drive them two minutes down the road feels ridiculous.

You decide you want to go somewhere, so you request a ride, I tell myself. It’s two minutes away, but you request a driver anyway. The app tells you he’s on his way and he’ll be here in twelve minutes. You can see where the car is in real time on the map. You have plenty of time to be ready. Even if somebody drops a plate in the kitchen just as the driver is arriving, it takes two seconds to send a text saying, ‘Sorry. Minor issue here. Give me two minutes.’ People can be so inconsiderate.

I watch the timer count down from five minutes. Four, three, two…

I’m pretty much counting down the seconds at this point. I can’t wait to mark it as a no-show. Even though I won’t make much money, at least this passenger will be charged for making me wait. She’ll see that her ride is gone and she was charged a fee. She’ll be sad, she’ll be out a few dollars, and now she’ll be the one having to wait around for the next driver. Serves her right. Maybe next time she’ll be more respectful of other people’s time.

Then the door opens and, finally, out comes a ninety-year-old woman—on crutches, because she only has one leg—awkwardly trying to wheel a suitcase behind her.

“Oh,” I say to myself. “So I’m the asshole.”

I get out of the car and help her with her bag.

This happens all the time. The details change, and it’s not usually this pronounced, but a person on my phone is so much easier to hate than a person in my car, even if they’re the same person.

Here’s a more everyday version:

I start off waiting outside an apartment with nothing but a name for this person I’m giving a ride to. I think, "This is ridiculous. Kyla has no respect for my time. She thinks the whole world revolves around her. This is typical Kyla!"

Then when I’ve already waited six minutes, she texts, "Be right out," and I hate her even more. After all this time? Now, she’s gonna text me? She couldn't do it when I arrived? How does she live with herself? I start thinking I’m going to give her a one-star rating as soon as this ride is over, because the app will never match me again with someone I gave one star to, and God forbid I ever cross paths with Kyla again. Plus, other drivers need to see that terrible rating next to her name and be warned never to accept a ride for Kyla. I hope she’s Gen Z. Gen Z cares about their star-ratings more than anyone else, and I want Kyla to cry when she sees that she got a one-star. Fuck Kyla.

Then Kyla comes out and she's awkward and funny and wears a Goosebumps sweater and I’m like, "Oh man, Goosebumps books were awesome," and she's like, "Right?" and all of a sudden we’re both trying to remember the title of that one with the amusement park and it’s driving us nuts, and then Common People by Pulp comes on the radio and she's singing along with it and I’m like, "You know Common People? My passengers never know Common People," and Kyla's like, "Have you ever heard the Shatner version?" and I’m like, "Have I heard the Shatner version? What am I, a rube, Kyla? Of course I've heard the Shatner version."

Then I drop Kyla off and she tips me five bucks in cash because she says she doesn't want Uncle Sam getting his grubby little paws on it, and I close out the ride, and the app asks me to rate my last passenger and I’m like, "Kyla? Of course Kyla gets five stars! I love Kyla!"

And it’s easy—way too easy—to forget that, before she came out in that Goosebumps sweater, I fucking hated her. In fact, my brain retcons the whole memory to the point that, if you asked me about it, I’d say, ‘Oh, I didn’t hate her. I was a little annoyed, maybe, but it wasn’t that big a deal to me.’

I have heard about studies where people react more negatively to text than they do to speech. I have always believed it. But even knowing it and believing it doesn't stop it from happening. When the person is a name on the phone, or a line of text in a message, they are not a human being yet and it's easy to hate them. When they sit down and talk to you and you can look them in the eye, nine times out of ten, they're easy to forgive. The bitch in my phone is so self-involved that she doesn’t care one bit about anyone else’s time. But Kyla?—Kyla in the Goosebumps sweater, who knows all the words to Common People?—Time probably just got away from her. It happens to all of us. I’m sure she was trying her best.

I think of Kyla and the one-legged woman when I see people fighting online—people who live to fight online, who I unfollow or block because their whole online presence is composed of, "Fuck this person," "So-and-so is a piece of shit," "I have twelve mutuals with this asshole," and the like.

I find myself wanting to tell them, "Buddy, that ain't a person. That's a name in your phone. Put the phone down. Let Kyla be."

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Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver is a series that tells true stories of my 10,000+ trips as a rideshare driver. I will post them every Monday.