Always Tip Your Driver

Trip length (pool): 19 minutes / 28 minutes. Trip distance (pool): 7.7 miles / 9.1 miles. Fare (pool): $19.55 / $21.88 (3.5x Surge) Song of the trip:  "Mountains" by Biffy Clyro So most New Year's, I only get one truly memorable story. This year, however, it's a Blue Light Special, and you get two for the price of one. (You are paying me for this, yeah?) Just after I dropped off the people who may or may not have been Russian gangsters that I told you about before, I got a call from someone who needed to go back down to Los Gatos. They were forgettable, but right after that, I found myself in the fortunate spot of being in downtown Los Gatos just ten minutes after bar close. Drivers have mixed feelings about Los Gatos. Sometimes you can hang around and there is the very definition of nothing going on and you'll have wasted half an hour. Others, Los Gatos Bar & Grill (or one of the three or four other places to drink late in downtown Los Gatos) has...

Trip length: 24 minutes. Trip distance: 8.4 miles. Fare: $38.47 (2.2x surge). Song of the trip: "Disappear" by INXS Some people think that driving on New Year's is a guaranteed way for a rideshare driver to make a ton of cash, and while that used to be true years ago, the last few years it has been nothing less than an utter shitshow, with people going out of their way to be on their worst behavior. Add that into the fact that it's the night you're most likely to be hit by a drunk driver. Considering that fares (surge pricing especially) has gone down a lot, I know a lot of other drivers have just given up on driving on the night at all, citing that it isn't worth the hassle. Me, I need the money, sadly. It's been busy, but not exceptionally so, just like a typical weekend night, but I glanced at my trip history and not one person has tipped thusfar tonight, and I'm starting to consider just packing it in and heading home. Of course, it...