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I began driving for Uber this past summer, sadly nothing I believe could have prepared me for what I was to encounter driving for them. Uber is a company that gives rides to people and delivers food and groceries to people. Uber is worth about 60 Billion dollars; yes you read that right billion with a "B"!! Uber employees approximately 2 million drivers worldwide and about 700,000 here in the US. Your average Uber driver makes about $9 an hour. If by some chance Uber would value their drivers more and raise the average to around $15 an hour they would still be worth billions. The fact is the Uber drivers put up with a lot of SHIT! yes I said it. We deal with rude customers, people trying to always get a cheaper price by cheating, we get judged and yet have no grounds for rebuttal, there is so much I have come across and Uber doesn't even encourage riders or people ordering food to tip. There is the frustrating, the crazy, and the plain comical phases of Uber! Let me explain!
First the complaints and it begins with the rudeness and inappropriateness of customers. It is crazy in an off the charts kind of way! Let me explain this, for those of you who do not use Uber in the app when you order food or order a ride, the app will send you the profile of the person who accepted your request. It gives their star rating, the car type and color, and a picture of the person along with some other tidbits the driver gets to put in when creating their profile. I have had men, knowing a woman is coming to deliver food (I only deliver food, I am not comfortable having drunken strangers in my car) open the door to me in all their boxer glory, yes there have been times I have been witness to much more than I would ever want to see. I am talking body parts hanging out that I could have lived my entire life without seeing or even wondering what it looked like. Sometimes these men act as if they are doing you a service by letting you see their wiggle and jiggle!
I have had people act as if they were hiding a dead body behind the door and literally squeeze their hand out grab the bag of food and slam the door. I don't expect them to stand on the porch stoop and talk to me for 5 minutes but I try to always be upbeat and smile, I always greet them with a "Good Morning" or "How are you today?" I confirm the order and I leave.t is really not too much to ask for you to be polite when I am providing a service for you that allows you to stay in your boxers and bras all morning! That brings me to another kind of customer, the one that try to pull a quick one to save some money.
Let me explain something first before we go into this customer type, Uber only pays the driver based on the trip from the restaurant to the patrons home, not your trip to the restaurant. Thus to save money I have had people and quite a few of them put an address, watch me and when I leave the restaurant call me and explain in detail (because you can track the driver in the app on our phone to see where your food is) that they put in the wrong address and could I possibly come to this difference address which is always further away. Now I will admit that sometimes we forget and things happen, it is an accident sometimes but when you have someone who does it continuously, yea that has happened too, and get mad because I joyously say sure just let me contact Uber to update the trip to get paid correctly, that is when I know it is intentional on the part of the customer. I have spent an hour looking for someone only to have them call me and tell me it’s the wrong address she just realized. I was supposed to go to her work and then give me a bad review because she messed up. Yes another part of Uber that I really do not like.
The customers get to rate you based on professionalism, how well you follow directions, ect. When a person does this and gives you a bad review, you can know what the review was about, that is it. Not what they said, or who it was from. So I am the kind of person that wants to know at the least what was said so I can either makes sure to correct myself or tell what really happened. When things are reported sometimes people do it to get the charge zeroed out. So when someone states I was not professional because I didn't talk to them for 10 minutes in the 30 degree weather I find that disrespectful. I greeted you with a smile, a hello, and a have a wonderful day, and try to stay warm and you get butt hurt so you low ball me and don’t leave a tip. Now who is the one being unprofessional?
When it comes to tipping it is a guessing game but usually the people that live in the lower income places tip better. Yep you heard right, I would say more than half the time the people that will tip the most and the fastest are the ones that don’t live in the million dollar homes and drive the Bentley’s. So real story, I delivered to a home in a gated community with a security guard at the gate, and the orders were rather large, I get to the guys house and he is polite have about 7 cars in the drive including a brand new Bentley, a BMW, and some older cars that been restored, he never once has tipped me and I have delivered for him many times. On the other hand a teenage boy who orders a large sprite from McDonald's (yes the $1 drink) pays $4 for delivery and still tips $6. Or the man that really did mistakenly put the wrong address and once I got there, not only did he have Uber correct the directions so I was paid right, he tipped me $20. That just has me thinking how crazy people are. So just to give you a laugh there have been times that I leave a job shaking my head at the directions I am given.
Crazy scary what comedy bits are made of come from jobs like this I am surer than ever. So to share I have to tell you about a newer housing development hat was being built on from an older housing development, I pick up this girls order and get a call when I am almost to her home, and she said ignore the directions, they are always wrong, well this is not uncommon but then she giggles and said instead come to the last house on the left. I am like excuse me? She said it’s the last house on the left and hangs up. So I am not sure any of you have seen it but I know when you go into the last house on the left you don’t come out. So I get to the house and it doesn’t look bad, but I call her and tell her I am here she needs to come to the door, I hand her the food and dart back to the car, I know this girl thought I was crazy but at least I am alive!! HA!
In the end it has been an adventure and I have enjoyed driving for Uber but in all seriousness Uber needs to support their drivers by paying a fair wage and not the wages they would like one to believe we are making, keeping their app updates (especially the maps. I am not going down another dead end dirt road that looks like it could be from the movie Wrong Turn, and stand up for us against people just looking to get a few dollars off their $4 delivery. Wake Up Uber you will always have drivers but are they the quality you want representing you?