Always Tip Your Driver

Trip length: 18 minutes. Trip distance: 4.4 miles. Fare: $16.78  Year: 2018. Song of the trip:  “Rain Street” by The Pogues So I told you that last story to tell you this one. Normally on Saint Paddy's Day, I turn on my phone to a playlist of Irish music that I like (The Pogues, Black-47, The Chieftains, Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys, etc.) and I'm stuck ferrying people who are so blisteringly drunk they have trouble finding the door handle to get out of the car. I figured I'd get at least one good story to tell you, but this wasn't the one I was expecting. There were  loads of drunks, but they weren't the most entertaining fare I had on St. Drunkard's Day. One of the most common things that happens when people get in the car is they want to hear a story. "Tell me about the craziest thing that's ever happened in here." "Have you ever been threatened?" "Has someone thrown up in your car?" "Has anyone tried to hav...

Trip length: 13 minutes. Trip distance: 3.8 miles. Fare: $11.36  Year: 2015. Song of the trip: “Roxanne” by The Police It's a sleepy Friday night but a fare earlier in the night had brought me up to Stanford University and I haven't been able to get away from the area since. The Stanford kids are generally decent enough riders, but sometimes things can get a little dicey. What I'm trying to do right now, though, is figure out what the hell is going on . About an hour ago, I brought the car to a stop in front of one of the dorms, and the phone said I was waiting for someone named Kyle. But a Kyle was not forthcoming. Instead, a brunette girl sauntered out, carrying a bag with her. Lovely, no denying, dressed in a rather slinky black dress, the classic little black dress that every girl keeps in her closet to make an impression, or so I'm told. No one's ever used a little black dress on me before. I can't tell if that means I'm too easy ...

Trip length: 18 minutes. Trip distance: 3.4  miles. Fare: $11.14. Year: 2015.  Song of the trip:  “Happy When It Rains” by The Jesus & Mary Chain So this is a flashback trip, and it's a short little one, but it's worth telling, I think. While the several year long drought in California ended in 2017, in 2016, we had one day of insane, unbelievable rain in January that felt like it was going to overwhelm the South Bay, and it very nearly did. Because the greater San Jose area had gone without rain for so long, many of the drains hadn't been flushed out, and leaves and detritus had been accumulating in them for years. Sure sure, they were supposed  to be kept up, but when it seems like the rain will never come again, people tend to slip or forget. All of that resulted in a single night in January where any Uber driver who'd never seen rain was tested, and those of us who grew up in rain got to see exactly how bad it was for an entire generation of driver...

Trip length: 38 minutes. Trip distance: 27  miles. Fare: $48.90. (split/UberPool) Year: 2018.  Song of the trip:  “Battle Without Honor Or Humanity” by Tomoyasu Hotei Being in San Francisco around bar close is, I imagine, a lot what the evacuation of a war zone is like. Everyone is scrambling to find their way out of town, many people are nervous and aimless, and there's a general sense of impending disaster on every face you see. As a rule, I try to avoid driving in San Francisco for any length of time, but tonight a chain of events had ended up in me dropping off a guy at 1:45 a.m. at his home in downtown SF, and short of just turning the app off and heading home, there was no chance I was getting out of here without a fare. This conundrum was that any fare I was going to get was going to pay well, but it was also going to be high risk. See, the city of San Francisco swells during work days and on the weekends, but empties out because no one can actually...

Trip length: 16 minutes. Trip distance: 5.2 miles. Fare: $11.66. Year: 2018. Song of the trip:  “Going The Distance” by Cake Time's important in this one, so stay with me. Through a long chain of events I don't want to bother to explain, I was in Newark (out by Oakland) as we were approaching bar close (2 a.m.), way outside of my normal zones. I tell you this simply so you understand that I don't know this area. Like, at all . Over the years, I've cultivated a deep well of knowledge about most of the areas of the Silicon Valley, so I can answer questions about late night places to eat (especially after the bars are closed). People ask, and I deliver. At least usually. I pull up to pick up someone named Travis, and the clock reads 1:48 a.m. and I haven't even brought the car to a full stop before the guy is opening the back door of the car and hopping in. "Go go go!" he says. I narrow my eyes for a moment and glance around looking to see if...

Trip length: 54 minutes. Trip distance: 39.8 miles. Fare: $64.52. Year: 2016. Song of the trip: “Public Transportation” by Satchel Grande I'd stopped up at Buster's Cheesesteaks on Broadway (best cheesesteaks in San Francisco by my reckoning) for a dinner break and was ready to get back to driving, so as soon as I got into my car and turned back online, there was already a fare popping up, about twelve blocks away. The couple is waiting for me at Kearney & Clay. It's good that they're ready when I arrive, because it's a dangerous place to try and stop. Both streets tend to be full of traffic, they're both one-way, they're both perpetually under construction and, most importantly, nobody wants to wait for you to pick up or drop off passengers. There's no shoulder or bike lane to pull into for just a few seconds to let someone get in or out, so there's inevitably people honking if you're stopped for more than fifteen seconds, any t...

Trip length: 48 minutes. Trip distance: 19.9 miles. Fare: $34.18 Song of the trip:  "Where Are You Going" by Dave Matthews This happened years ago, but it's a fun story to tell you none the less. But there are a couple of things that are important to understand about the time we were in when this story takes place. This was before Orange 45 became the dictator of the U.S., before tipping was allowed through the Uber app. Let's call it three years ago. One of the most common questions I get as an Uber driver has always been "Is it true you don't know where you're driving a passenger until they get into the car?" In the last few months, Uber's implemented a feature to notify a driver when a request is a trip over 45 minutes, so that drivers who don't want to get too far out of their home can pass on fares that might take them to, say, San Francisco from San Jose. We didn't have that feature back when this story happened. (Mind y...